Drug War Database May Include Medical Marijuana Patients

If you use medical marijuana, your name and prescription may be entered into a state database that will now be made available to local police, as well as state police and agents of the federal Drug Enforcement Administration, according to an article in the Boston Globe. The Prescription Monitoring Program, a database originally created by the state to track diversion of prescription painkillers like Vicodin and Oxycontin, may also be expanded to include prescriptions for medical marijuana, and state doctors will be forced to enter their prescriptions in the system.
No one quoted in the Globe article expressed any respect for patients’ privacy. No one expressed concern that patients might be any more hesitant to seek treatment knowing that their use of certain drugs would be subject to three levels of police scrutiny. And none suggested that the state’s Public Health Council was too hasty in approving the rules with no hearings and zero public input of any kind on a matter intimately affecting patients across the state.
Strangely, the state has just closed a drug-diversion unit of the State Police that had operated since 1974. The idea is for the local police to take up the staties’ fallen standard, though local police are much less equipped to deal with the typical operating method of a drug diverter, namely, securing multiple prescriptions in different towns.
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Local police expand roles in drug war
Can access data on prescriptions
By Chelsea Conaboy
| Globe Staff

January 14, 2013

Local police who are investigating the illegal distribution of powerful
painkillers will have access to a state database tracking prescriptions
for the drugs under rules approved by health officials last week. The
expansion of the Prescription Monitoring Program comes just as local
departments are being asked to take on more responsibility for the drug
cases.

http://www.bostonglobe.com/lifestyle/health-wellness/2013/01/14/local-law-enforcement-given-access-prescription-drug-database/DHqX7oDX3XEORwT38s7eZM/story.html?event=event12