Authorities arrested a Faith man Thursday for the third time, charging him with illegally obtaining prescription drugs.
But he says it’s all just a misunderstanding.
An informant told Salisbury Police that Jonathon Lewis Bost, 29, of 1013 Gardner St., Faith, was again obtaining prescriptions by fraud. Police say they found that Bost had been to local pharmacies presenting false identification to obtain two prescription drugs.
On Thursday, sheriff’s deputies arrested Bost and charged him with obtaining a non-controlled substance by fraud and obtaining a controlled substance by fraud.
Police Detective Rodney Harris said Bost obtained Zythromax, an antibiotic, and Guiatuss AC, a cough syrup containing codeine.
On Feb. 5, Bost was charged with driving while intoxicated, and last month Kannapolis Police charged Bost with eight counts of obtaining a controlled substance by fraud, all felonies, and felony probation violation. Kannapolis Detective Chris Nesbitt said Bost gave false names and symptoms to several doctors to get prescriptions for pain relievers, such as OxyContin and hydrocodeine. He filled the prescriptions at Walgreens on Cannon Boulevard.
Bost is on probation for another case. Last May, he was charged with using someone else’s name to get a prescription for a codeine-based cough syrup. He was working as a computer tutor at East Rowan High School at the time.
He received a suspended jail sentence and 16 months of unsupervised probation.
Bost says that all the charges are the result of a misunderstanding.
He said that in all the pharmacy cases, his prescriptions had been called in by a doctor and he simply went and picked them up. How, he questioned, could he have presented false information? “I didn’t forge any prescription or do anything like that,” he said. Bost said the pharmacy simply got the wrong address.
“I didn’t forge anything. That’s not to say I didn’t once have an addiction,” he said.
Bost said he has been undergoing recovery for two months. He said he did become addicted to prescription “multiple high doses of narcotics” after being prescribed them after a back injury. However, he says, he has never done illegal drugs.
“I can’t tell you how much in two months that it (rehabilitation) has helped me,” he said.
He knows his addiction has affected his family. “Addiction is a terrible thing,” he said. “They hurt for me and I hurt for them.”
Bost said he is planning on straightening out the mix-up and has hired a lawyer. “I don’t want any more trouble.”
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