Should the state know what's in your medicine cabinet?

My colleague Chris Tisch, who has written extensively about the abuse of prescription drugs in Florida, reports today that a bill in the Legislature to track prescriptions through a statewide monitoring system is running into trouble.

The measure is House Bill 1011, by state Rep. Jack Seiler, D-Fort Lauderdale. The bill would require a pilot project for prescription monitoring in South Florida, starting no later than 2009, which then would be expanded to the rest of the state. The idea is that "doctor shoppers" who try to get multiple prescriptions for the same drug would be caught by the system.

Tisch reports there are two reasons for opposition to Seiler's bill. The first is  cost, which supporters say could be offset by grants. The second concern is more serious -- does the government really need to know what is in the medicine cabinets of law-abiding citizens?

Prescription drug abuse is a modern and growing problem, linked to some 2,000 deaths a year in Florida, about a quarter of them in the Tampa Bay area. That is a tragic human cost and the cases Tisch has chronicled are heartbreaking.

On the other hand, to address it, we're talking about giving the government total access into the medicine cabinets of 18-million law-abiding people. Even though 35 other states have some form of this system, that's still no reason to embrace it automatically.

It is illegal in this state for the government to compile lists of law-abiding citizens who own a gun. So why should the government be able to know which homes on which block have which prescriptions in the medicine cabinet? Is personal freedom and privacy so easily surrendered in the name of fighting crime? Or do you think that the compelling state interest in fighting drug abuse overrides that privacy?

Sound like a Tuesday column to me...

Comments

[guy]

The State of Florida, in years gone by, alway's had a maverick kind of separation toward federal laws.
This brought lots of admiration from across the country.
Lately I have noticed the state kind of falling in step to the beat of Washinton DC's drum. This trend is toward the worse.
I am a Yankee, who learned in school that Florida was the only southern state, that never did surrender during the Civil War. Hence a good reason for a little attitude.
My medicine cabinet is just that.

If our Legislature continues to do nothing about property insurance, although they promised they would in order to get elected… our foreclosure rate should continue to climb higher than its current historical high… the more empty houses we have, the more empty medicine cabinets within those empty houses. Therefore, our government will have no reason to track what’s in those empty medicine cabinets within those empty houses.

Problem Solved, taxes saved!

OK - well looks like they are going to do something about property insurance afterall! They are going to raid Citizens funds which have been placed aside to address future hurricane claims to pay for the shortfall in this year's budget.

Scary isn't it?

[Don Mott]

Just one more symbolic gesture of an elected representative with less brains than votes at the polls. The state will as usual push the costs of this surveillance onto the local governments and neither have the budget to finance such a large database. Not to mention, from my readings the majority of the folks overdosing do so on drugs that were not prescribed to them but were purchased illegally. One more politician wasting our dollars on hare-brained ideas. I think next we should have everyone driving over the Sunshine Skyway sign a form saying they will not jump off once they reach the top.