Drug Cops Want Open Access To Your Medical Records

In response to a spike in overdoses on prescription painkillers, and a rash of media scare stories about ADHD drugs like Ritalin and Adderall, a number of politicians, pundits, and public health activists have demanded better monitoring of doctors and patients. The thinking is that by creating databases of patients taking controlled substances, we’ll be able to catch drug-dealing doctors and intervene on behalf of drug addicted patients.

I think many of the reports about accidental addicts and overdose deaths are either exaggerated or don’t tell the whole story, but that’s too much to get into here. (See the series I wrote on this issue for Huffington Post.) But this column by Christopher Moraff in central Pennsylvania’s Patriot-News warns of the consequences letting the government see what medication you’re taking:

With America united in collective outrage over revelations of widespread domestic surveillance by the National Security Agency, another federal branch – the Drug Enforcement Agency – has quietly set about dismantling the Fourth Amendment when it comes to accessing our private medical data.