DEA Wants Access To Medical Records Without Warrant (thedailybeast.com)

mi writes from a report via The Daily Beast: Unlike in cases of commercially-held data, where the Third Party doctrine allows police warrantless access, prescription drug monitoring databases are maintained by state-governments. The difference is lost to the Obama Administration, which argues that "since the records have already been submitted to a third party (a state's Prescription Drug Monitoring Program) that patients no longer enjoy an expectation of privacy." The DEA has claimed for years that under federal law it has the authority to access the states' prescription drug databases using only an "administrative subpoena." These are unilaterally issued orders that do not require a showing of probable cause before a court, like what's required to obtain a warrant. Some states, like Oregon, fight it; some, like Wisconsin, do not. "The federal government is eager to see all these databases linked," reports The Daily Beast. "The Department of Justice has developed a software platform to facilitate sharing among all state PDMPs. So far 32 states already share their PDMP data through a National Association of Boards of Pharmacy program. The Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act (CARA), which passed Congress in March, calls for expanding sharing of PDMP data."

Comments

Hey, Obama, Trump doesn't need any help...

[chaboud]

As a Obama supporter (twice), can I just say:

Dude... Obama... stop. The tin foil hat brigade is giving me that knowing nod of "see? We fucking told you", and I have no reasonable retort. The Constitution was supposed to be your wheelhouse.

makes no sense

[geoskd]

What is with all these requests for data without a warrant? If they have a legitimate request for access, it will be very easy for them to get a warrant. The only reason I can think of to want warrantless access is to circumvent constitutional protections.

Re:makes no sense

[russotto]

Several reasons, here's two:

1) They want to run correlations to see if they can find people abusing prescription medicines and bust them.

2) If they want to put pressure on someone for any reason, they want to dig up their prescription records. Aha, you've had several prescriptions for Percocet, does your professional review board know about your drug habit? Does your boss know you've been prescribed SSRIs? Do you want them to? No? Better play ball.

Re:why does this database exist in the first place

[nbauman]

Because there were about 30,000 deaths a year recently from opioids in the US.

This widely-reported number deliberately confuses

--people who take heroin to get high

--people who take prescription drugs without a prescription to get high

-- people who were appropriately prescribed opioids and died anyway

-- people who were appropriately prescribed opioids but given doses that were too low and got additional drugs somewhere

-- people who were prescribed opioids but couldn't afford them so they used cheaper heroin, etc.

It is a legitimate problem, but the Drug Enforcement Agency runs things and their solution to all problems is to put people in prison. When you've got a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

You could get a rational discussion of the problem in those silly European magazines like Lancet, BMJ or New Scientist. Unfortunately some of the Europeans are following the American example of stupidity.

Re:First it was the NSA ...

[Applehu Akbar]

Let the addicts have their favored poison, and quietly remove themselves from the gene pool.

I would rather we had a drug problem than suffer the continuing existence of the DEA. Oh, wait - we still do have a drug problem as well as a DEA. And when the agency goes, can we have back the parts of the Constitution that we deleted for their benefit?