I worked in the pharmacy here in California for 20 years. Most states have different laws regarding filling controlled substances. Here in California under Medical a patient gets a 90 days supply on ANY med that is on their formulary. There are many patients with severe chronic pain or other conditions that do get large amounts of narcotics. Medical allows only 9 prescriptions per month and anything over that requires a TAR, a special request to fill more thrn 9 prescriptions. Many, many patients take more then the nine so Medical wants and requests a 90 day supply.
If you have private insurance most if not all in my state will only allow a 30 day supply. So if a patient had a prescription for lets say Vicodin take 1-2 tabs every 4hr, the doctor could write for a quantity of #240 pills.
Some meds do have a restriction and those can still be filled but your insurance requires a prior auth from your doctor with a diagnosis etc.
Insurance companies computers are nationwide. So if you came to my pharmacy and we billed your insurance for Vicodin then you took another prescription to another pharmacy in another city, even a different doctor it will reject the claim for "refill too soon".
If someone comes in with a large quantity for like Vicodin we ALWAYS call the doctors office to verify.
I worked closely with the DEA and did numerous drug busts at my pharmacy. It took awhile to catch some, but we did. One was a nurse who would call in codine cough medicine under a childs name. I busted her along with the DEA officer.
The best bust I ever took part of was on a women who was totally doctor shopping. I finally had time one day and called around to all the local and not so local pharmacies. OMG she had twenty different doctors and a stolen prescription pad. She had no insurance and paid cash. DEA was with me in the pharmacy, police had given us a walkie talkie. I was nervous because this was a big one. They followed her from her home and she actually stopped at church on her way to me. My tech sold her the prescription and the cops came up behind her and she was finally arrested. Sad part she had two kids with her.
Sorry this went a little off topic but this is one of the few threads where I actually know my stuff
Feel free to ask me any questions.