Note - this is fueled by the artificially high cost of drugs by health insurance:
End health coverage for drugs and HIV meds and percocet won't be a hot item

Ruben 

May 6, 2011 Not Far From the Pharmacy, a Different Sort of Drug Deal By
MICHAEL WILSON The universal, not-so-secret password of the drug deal:
“What you got, man?”

Only, in a twist on drug deals and, perhaps, health care reform and the
law of supply and demand, the question plays out in reverse on a few
busy blocks of Washington Heights.

All day, every day, at the top of the steps of the uptown No. 1 train
station at 157th Street and Broadway, the “dealer” is the person
asking the question, and the person he is asking is you, if you’re
carrying any sort of bag from a drug store. The dealer is not interested
in drugs like cocaine, heroin or marijuana. The dealer wants to talk
about Oxycontin and Percocet and, increasingly, the pills that make up
the cocktail that combats H.I.V.

Here is how it works:

“These guys come out at 9:30 or 10 in the morning and step out with a
cup of coffee and a doughnut like they’re going to a real job,” said
a 59-year-old resident who, despite a long enough history of complaining
to the authorities to qualify him as a gadfly, declined to give his name
for fear of reprisal from the dealers.

A person with a bag from a drugstore finds himself — perhaps
unintentionally, perhaps not — walking a gantlet of sharp-eyed young
men outside the station. “They’re all over you like crazy,” said
a longtime building superintendent in the area, again unidentified.

It doesn’t matter what is in the bag. “You’ve got a little lunch
in your hand,” the gadfly said. “They’re approaching you to see
if you want to sell your old prescription products.”

They are indiscriminate: “I’ve been approached,” said Michael
Mowatt-Wynn, whose professorial appearance alone would seem to make
him an unlikely member of the black market. But he also happens to
be the president of the Police Department’s 33rd Precinct Community
Council. He was asked if he had Percocet to sell.

If the answer is yes, buyer and seller step down into the subway station
or around a corner and make the sale. The police believe the drugs are
later shipped to the Dominican Republic, or resold on the streets.

“The young ones will rob you,” the superintendent said. But
historically speaking, it is a relatively bloodless operation. In a
not-too-distant past, this was the battleground of a drug siege led by
the so-called Jheri Curl Gang, for the product that shone in their hair,
and the Wild Cowboys, who occupied entire buildings and sold packages of
crack so recognizable that they were practically trademarked. The gangs
protected their corners with guns, and dozens were convicted of murders
in Manhattan courts in the 1990s.

By comparison, the guys on Broadway are like Girl Scouts hitting you
up to buy Thin Mints. The super provided the ultimate glass-half-full
analysis: “They’re not selling drugs,” he said. “They’re buying
drugs. They’re not infesting the neighborhood with drugs. They’re
taking drugs out.”

The legal penalties for buying and selling medicine do not approach
those for hard drugs. In March, three men were arrested near the C train
station on 155th Street; one sold H.I.V. medicine to the other two. They
were charged with criminal diversion of prescriptions, a misdemeanor;
one of the men pleaded guilty and was sentenced to time served.

Last year, the police arrested suspects at stash houses in Yonkers
and Brooklyn who were stockpiling H.I.V. medication for shipment to
the Dominican Republic. The investigation was led by the New York
City special narcotics prosecutor, who ultimately passed it off to
other agencies because there were no narcotics involved. The office is
working on legislation that would put more teeth in arrests for sales
of noncontrolled substances.

Capt. Brian Mullen, the precinct’s new commanding officer, said there
were arrests on Broadway in March and April. “My guys are out there
every day, looking to make arrests in that specific area,” he said.

On Tuesday, I approached a young man sitting on a standpipe on Broadway
and told him I was writing a story about people selling pills. He asked
for identification and then walked away, quickly returning with an older
man in his 30s or 40s who beckoned me to follow him toward the entrance
to an apartment building, set well off the sidewalk.

We sat on a box under scaffolding and he said, “What you got, man?”
I told him I was a reporter working on a story. Suddenly, there were
three other men in the alley, standing around us.

Just as quickly, they were gone. The older man got up and said he had
nothing to say. I asked one more time about pills, and he turned and
said with exasperation, “I thought you had pills.”

E-mail: crimescene@nytimes.com