WHY POLICE WANT PRESCRIPTION DRUG DATA

FOR THE RECORD

From Darrel W. Stephens, Charlotte-Mecklenburg chief of police:

The Observer article "Police want medicine data quickly" (March 4) does not
fully explain why the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department (CMPD) seeks
this legislative clarification. The article gives a false impression of the
type of information that would be sought.

The focus of the clarification is on the prescription drugs listed on the
Controlled Substances Act. The list does not include prescription
medications such as Viagra or Prozac, as the article suggested.

Local police have exercised this authority for many years, as the law had
been interpreted to apply to county and municipal investigators until a
privacy lawsuit in Cary in 1997. Because of this case, we're asking the
legislature to include specific authorization for local and county law
enforcement agencies that are assigned the task of investigating controlled
substance violations. Here's why that is critically important:

Although G.S. 90-107 currently gives the authority to access these records
to state and federal agencies, state and federal law enforcement agencies
rarely conduct this type of investigation. The responsibility for these
investigations rests primarily with local police agencies. Without this
authority at the local level, controlled substance prescription crimes will
receive even less attention than they do now.

Consider: 3.9 million Americans use prescription drugs for non-medical
reasons, far surpassing the 2.1 million who use heroin, cocaine and/or
crack cocaine, according to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services
Administration.

Of the 20 most commonly abused drugs, 13 are prescription medications,
according to the National Association of Drug Diversion Investigators.

The prescription pain reliever OxyContin is a major problem in the Eastern
United States (Charlotte as well) and is known as a suitable substitute for
heroin, according to the National Drug Intelligence Center.

Prescription drugs are a substantial part of America's drug abuse problem.
To be sure, police enforcement is not the solution to this problem, but it
is an important part of the solution.

An overwhelming majority of the 863 prescription drug cases the CMPD
investigated last year involved forgery and fraud. That is the easiest way
to illegally obtain pharmaceutical controlled substances. Most of these
cases came to the attention of the police through alert pharmacists. A
strict interpretation of the current law and concern over liability would
prohibit pharmacists from reporting such crimes.

Prescription records are the primary source of information for addressing
the problem of "doctor shopping." Addicts go to great extremes to seek
controlled substances, including seeing multiple physicians and medical
facilities in the same day. "Doctor shopping" is a felony, not a
misdemeanor as indicated in the article. Physicians often are not aware
that a patient seeking drugs is being untruthful.

Finally, police officers don't have time to go on "fishing expeditions" to
randomly search through citizens' prescription records, nor do they have
the authority. In the CMPD, these cases are investigated by three
detectives whose workload has increased substantially over the past five
years as the problem of prescription drug abuse has grown. Many of their
cases come from reports from pharmacists. Others come from arrests for
other crimes. None of their investigations begin with a random search of
prescription records. Moreover, the overwhelming majority of their
investigations have focused on prescription drugs listed in the Controlled
Substances Act.

Our purpose in seeking this legislative clarification is to provide a solid
legal basis on which officers can address these serious crimes. We hope the
legislature will craft legislation that will let police conduct these
investigations while respecting the privacy of citizens' medical records.

Stephens