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

First it was the NSA ...

[Taco Cowboy]

... then FBI, then DEA ...

The system rots, from within

Fuck The DEA

[zenlessyank]

Fuck them forever. Fuck them from day one. Fuck anyone who works for them. Fuck anyone who supports them. Fuck any country that employs them. Lastly...FUCK THE DEA

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.

Don't tell your doctor about marijuana

[nbauman]

I would recommend that you never tell your doctor that you use marijuana.

That will usually go into your medical record, because it's part of your medical and social history.

Now with electronic medical records, anybody with access can do a text search for "marijuana" and find it.

The most obvious problem that I can identify is that years later, you might have a legitimate need for opioids.

For example, hip and knee replacements are very painful. In order to be successful, they require physical therapy, which is also very painful, and often can't be done right without opioids. (See Jane Brody's story in the New York Times about her own knee replacements.)

If your medical record mentions marijuana, that can set off some (unscientific) guidelines for using opioids, which require that you sign a "pain contract." You have to take (unnecessary and expensive) drug tests, with (unnecessary and expensive) doctors' visits, with lower doses than would be medically appropriate, and they can discontinue opioids if you test positive for marijuana. Normally it would be a violation of medical ethics to abandon a patient, but these pain contracts allow doctors to unethically abandon a patient if they violate some of these provisions.

The Veterans Administration just backed off on one of those pain contracts after a veteran sued them. But not everybody can afford a lawyer.

http://journalofethics.ama-ass...
Veterans Health Administration Policy on Cannabis as an Adjunct to Pain Treatment with Opiates
Michael Krawitz
AMA Journal of Ethics.
June 2015, 17(6):558-561.

If a doctor specifically asks about marijuana, I think a good answer would be, "You can't guarantee me that this information will be confidential, right?"

Re:makes no sense

[geoskd]

why should you be protected if you're a criminal? What's the reasoning. Stop committing crimes.

Because if there was a way to know in advance who the criminals are, getting the warrants would be trivial, even for large numbers of them. Your entire point is that it should be permitted for agencies to go on "fishing expeditions". That is exactly the kind of government behavior that our constitution forbids, and with good reason.

The simplest counter argument I have is that drug use *shouldn't be illegal*, so what is and is not criminal seems to be up for debate, so giving the government wholesale powers of enforcement for what many believe shouldn't even be crimes is just begging for trouble. What happens when tomorrow our government declares that being a democrat is illegal? Think that sounds ridiculous? I believe Joseph McCarthy proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that this a is a very real possibility. Every time we grant the government *any* new powers, they take one step closer to the same status as the Taliban. Remember that when you want to give these agencies powers they never had before. The only thing that would stop a president Trump from doing half the crazy things he says he will do, is the fact that our constitution expressly prohibits him from getting away with it, even if he is elected president.