PULASKI, Va. (AP) - Six pharmacies will soon be able to ask customers wanting the powerful painkiller OxyContin and some other narcotic drugs to provide their fingerprints.

Police provided the fingerprint kits hoping to deter prescription fraud. The invisible-ink prints will be kept at the pharmacy.

``If we take just one or two bad bottles off the street a month then we've accomplished a lot,'' Detective Marshall Dowdy said.

Police and pharmacy officials plan to meet next week to determine when pharmacists would require the fingerprints, police said Tuesday.

Hailed as a miracle painkiller for cancer and chronic-pain patients,
OxyContin is widely abused, especially in Appalachia. Ground-up pills are snorted or injected, giving abusers a heroin-like high.

Since 1998, OxyContin and oxycodone, the narcotic's active ingredient, have been linked to more than 100 deaths nationwide.

J. David Haddox, senior medical director for health policy at Purdue Pharma, OxyContin's manufacturer in Stamford, Conn., said fingerprints would be acceptable if applied to the purchase of all comparable drugs.

The fingerprint system, manufactured by CrimeBite, also is used by grocery stores that cash payroll checks. Company president Lydia del Rossi said Pulaski is the only town she knows of using it to help fight prescription fraud.

``Once that fingerprint is there, it's hard to say you didn't do it,'' said Leslie King, the pharmacist at a Pulaski supermarket. ``I don't know if it will cut down on people who are using it, but maybe it will make people realize it is a felony.''