PRESCRIPTION DRUG DATABASE RAISES PRIVACY CONCERNS

COLUMBIA--The state would maintain a database of prescription drugs sold in
the state and their purchasers under a measure a House budget panel approved
Wednesday.

The plan immediately raised concerns about privacy.

House Majority Leader Rick Quinn, R-Columbia, won approval for the
database as a Ways and Means subcommittee wrapped up work on temporary
law changes that will be part of the state budget.

Quinn told the panel that the database, operated by the state
Department of Health and Environmental Control, would help cut down on
prescription drug abuses. For instance, he said, police would be able
to catch people who visit multiple doctors for treatment of the same
malady and get prescription drugs that they then resell.

The legislation affects Schedule II through V drugs. Those are the
harshest legal-narcotics, such as morphine, down to cough syrups with
codeine.

"It seems very overreaching for the government to be tracking
prescription drug use of all health care recipients in our state,"
said Sue Berkowitz, executive director of the South Carolina Appleseed
Legal Justice Center.

The budget amendment says different groups could access the
data:

- -- Pharmacists, for the prescriptions they issue.

- -- Patients, for the prescriptions they receive.

- -- State regulators investigating pharmacists.

- -- Grand juries with a subpoena.

- -- Law officers investigating abuse of legal drugs.

Quinn's proposal requires no subpoena or warrant for law enforcement
access to the information. People who improperly disclose database
information face a fine of no more than $5,000.

"Law-abiding citizens should not have their records gone through just
because law enforcement wants to check them," Berkowitz said.

"Usually to get that information you have to have some probable cause
to believe something is wrong," said House Minority Leader James
Smith, D-Columbia. Most people don't like the idea of government
"creating these vast warehouses of data for the purpose of surveilling
people's habits without any suspicion or the reason to believe that
may-be something criminal is going on."

There's more than human drug trade at issue. The measure affects
prescriptions for "the person or animal" getting medicine.

In going after drug dealers, House Republicans are hitting the privacy
of all "South Carolina citizens, not to mention their pets," Smith
said. "It's a sad day for animals everywhere," said Rep. Todd
Rutherford, D-Columbia. They're not likely to show up in the
Statehouse lobby to protest, he said. "How do you stop big brother
looking in on your animals?"