What in the hell can we do to stop this?
I never consented to have my private health data given to the DEA.
Can we mount legal challenges?
DEA Pursues Vast Expansion of Patient Surveillance
Now DEA is proposing a new system that makes PDMPs look like child’s play. “the DEA is interested in its agents having ‘unlimited access to patient de-identified data’ on re/filled prescriptions, daily supply, payment type, dosing information and gender.”
Those are direct quotes from the DEA’s request for proposals. Like, this isn’t some hidden deep-state conspiracy. They’re actively seeking bidders to do this,
https://twitter.com/Filtermag_org @Filtermag_orgreports. And “patient de-identified data,” btw, means your name, DOB, and other personal info.
The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) is looking to expand its anti-diversion surveillance infrastructure by being able to search and analyze myriad patient behaviors for the vast majority of controlled and scheduled drug prescriptions—all accompanied by a rapid process for legally unveiling personally identifying information.
In early September, the agency requested proposals for the creation of software capable of searching at least 85 percent of all US residents’ controlled-substance prescriptions for certain patient behaviors, as well as prescriber and pharmacist practices.
The Pharmacy Prescription Data system would cede patient-level data to the federal drug-war agency to a far greater extent than comparable existing databases.
According to the agency’s request for proposal (RFP), the DEA is interested in its agents having “unlimited access to patient de-identified data” on re/filled prescriptions, daily supply, payment type, dosing information and gender, among other characteristics, until at least 2025.
The current Automated Reports and Consolidated Orders System (ARCOS), created by the Controlled Substances Act alongside the DEA itself, only monitors controlled substances’ manufacture, supply chains and distribution.
Guess Who’s Tracking Your Prescription Drugs?
Your doctor, your pharmacist… and the police.
By Beth Schwartzapfel
https://www.themarshallproject.org/2017/08/02/guess-whos-tracking-your-prescription-drugs
As drug overdose deaths continue their record climb, Missouri last month became the 50th state to launch a prescription drug monitoring program, or PDMP. These state-run databases, which track prescriptions of certain potentially addictive or dangerous medications, are widely regarded as an essential tool to stem the opioid epidemic. Missouri Gov. Eric Greitens last month announced he was creating one in what had been the lone holdout state; legislative efforts to establish a program there had repeatedly failed because of lawmakers’ concerns about privacy.
Their concerns were not unfounded.
Federal courts in Utah and Oregon recently ruled that the Drug Enforcement Administration, in its effort to investigate suspected drug abusers or pill mills, can access information in those states’ PDMPs without a warrant, even over the states’ objections. And last month in California, the state supreme court ruled that the state medical board could view hundreds of patients’ prescription drug records in the course of its investigation of a physician accused of misconduct. “Physicians and patients have no reasonable expectation of privacy in the highly regulated prescription drug industry,” District Judge David Nuffer wrote in the Utah case.
Approaches to PDMPs vary, with some states structuring them primarily as a tool of law enforcement and others as a public health intervention. In 27 states, investigators must get a warrant or ask a court or grand jury for permission to access the information, according to the PDMP Training and Technical Assistance Center at Brandeis University.
In many of these states, the database’s primary purpose is to alert doctors or pharmacists to patients who may be “doctor shopping”: seeking pills from several prescribers, a red flag for an addiction problem. Prescription drugs are responsible for almost half of the nation’s opioid overdose deaths, and abuse of pills like OxyContin can be a precursor to heroin or its more deadly cousin, fentanyl. Some states recommend, and others require, that doctors log each prescription and check the database before writing new ones.
The opioid Tramadol is used to relieve moderate to moderately severe pain. Jose M. Osorio/Chicago Tribune, via Newscom
But in 21 states and the District of Columbia, police can also access the databases as a matter of course; some have their own log-ins to use at their discretion. A Scripps investigation last year found that in those states alone, law enforcement viewed more than 300,000 patients’ prescription histories over the course of two years. In some states there’s a back-and-forth of information, with health department officials alerting law enforcement to possible unscrupulous providers.
Some public health advocates warn that knowing cops are looking over their shoulders can interfere with the doctor-patient relationship and cause a “chilling effect” among even legitimate prescribers. “Even in situations where patients are experiencing dire and debilitating pain, I have seen…many physicians becoming unwilling to issue prescriptions for medically necessary narcotic painkillers because they fear scrutiny by law enforcement,” wrote an Oregon physician in an affidavit in the case there.
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The scope of information in the databases varies widely, too. In Oregon, anyone prescribed testosterone is included in the PDMP, which prompted two transgender men to join the case in protest. Other drugs commonly included in PDMPs are used to treat anxiety disorders, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and migraines. “These conditions ‘are among some of the most frequently diagnosed conditions in Americans,’ meaning that it is ‘likely that state prescription drug monitoring programs… will soon contain sensitive information about most Americans, if they do not already,’” the ACLU wrote in a brief in the Utah case.
Great resource