STATE ISSUES APOLOGY TO POT PATIENTS

Newspaper Sought Summary But Got List Of Medical Users

The state Department of Public Safety has sent a letter of apology to
all medical marijuana patients in regarding the release of their
names to the Tribune-Herald.

The accidental release generated a flurry of calls to both the
newspaper and DPS officials by concerned patients, following a June
27 news article on medical marijuana.

The article contained this sentence: "Of those 4,200 people (with
marijuana licenses), 2,640 of them live on the Big Island, according
to a database that the Department of Public Safety provided to the
Tribune-Herald on Thursday that lists the name of each patient, the
location of their marijuana plants, license information and the names
of their physicians."

The article did not name any of the patients, but many of them called
the Tribune-Herald to ask if the above statement was true.

Public Safety Director Clayton Frank addressed the concerns in the
July 7 letter to all 4,200 patients statewide:

"On June 24, 2008, medical marijuana registration information ... was
mistakenly forwarded by e-mail to a news reporter by one of our
department employees. The employee believed he was sending a
different document," the letter states. "The information sent
included the names and addresses of medical marijuana prescription
holders, the names of the prescribing doctors and the medical
marijuana certificate numbers issued to each prescription holder.
Your name and corresponding information was included in this list,"
the letter states.

At the request of DPS, the Tribune-Herald has tracked down all
electronic copies of this database and purged it from its system. No
hard copies were made and it was never leaked to any outside party.

Frank's letter continues:

"Steps are also being taken internally within my department so that
this does not happen again. Our information technology personnel have
isolated the medical marijuana registry so that it cannot be
mistakenly forwarded in the future. Further protocol is also being
activated, putting additional internal controls into place.

"The end result of this incident is that we have confirmed as much as
possible that none of the disseminated information remains in
anyone's control other than at this department. We write to inform
you of this confidentiality breach, however, because of the sensitive
nature of the information and so that you can take any precautions
you deem appropriate to protect yourself against possible misuse of
this information. Neither social security (sic) numbers nor dates of
birth were included in the information shared," Frank wrote.

Jim Propotnick, the DPS deputy director for law enforcement, said
that such a release of information would not recur.

"We've taken the necessary steps to make sure that can't happen
again," he said.

Asked about any repercussions for the employee who released the data,
Propotnick said that "it's under investigation as to exactly what happened."

The Tribune-Herald had e-mailed DPS, asking for the number of medical
marijuana patients in Hawaii, broken down by island or county. A DPS
employee responded, but sent the detailed list of patients rather
than a summary.

The DPS Web site has a list of frequently asked questions for
patients, including the question of whether a patient's
confidentiality is protected.

"Yes," it says. "However, upon an inquiry by a law enforcement
agency, the Department of Public Safety will verify whether a
particular qualifying patient has registered with the Department and
may provide reasonable access to the registry information for
official law enforcement purposes."