According to a recent report out of Washington, prescription drug heists are growing at an alarming rate. Thieves are stealing large quantities of prescription drugs for resale on the black market.

Just recently thieves knocked over a pharmaceutical warehouse in Connecticut, taking upwards of 75 million dollars worth of pharmaceuticals. According to stats, pharmaceutical heists in the U.S. have quadrupled since 2006.

Many contribute the rise to the easy sell of the drugs over the internet from no prescription pharmacies. Lifestyle drugs like Viagra and Cialis can easily be bought and sold online without any prescription.

“Whenever you have a health care system where drugs are very expensive and there’s a fragmented supply chain, you’re going to have a means to profit from stolen drugs,” said Ron Greene, a spokesman for FreightWatch.

The FDA is trying to tighten down on these criminals, issuing alerts to the public, working with manufacturers, wholesalers, pharmacies and law enforcement, and publishing lot numbers of stolen drugs on a Web site.

A well known low-cost drug known improved diabetes symptoms was found in a Boston study being published today, and its success supports an entirely new way of understanding the disease.

The drug, called salsalate, is also being studied as a potential treatment for repeat heart attacks and to stall development of Type 2 diabetes.

Type 2 diabetes, currently affects over 20 million Americans, most commonly affecting those that gain a considerable amount of weight. Scientists know there is a connection between weight gain and diabetes but have had a hard time connecting the dots. Salsalate is known to have anti-inflammatory properties, results of original studies suggest that the extra pounds cause chronic inflammation, triggering a cascade of problems from diabetes to heart disease to eye troubles.

“We should all exercise and reduce our body weight, but if we fail to do that, this might be a good drug,’’ said Dr. Marc Y. Donath, a diabetes researcher and professor at University Hospital in Zurich.

Though chemically resembling aspirin, salsalate causes far fewer stomach problems and has none of the bleeding risks. It has been used for about 40 years to treat the joint pain of arthritis, with few known side effects, and sells for as little as 16 cents per pill here at NoPrescriptioNeeded.com.

The only drawback is the drug’s low cost might actually hurt its chances of reaching patients. Normally, big pharma tries to shut down things like this that they don’t stand to make much money on.