Big Brother in Tennessee
Think you have a right to privacy in your medical decisions? You don't, at least under a new Tennessee law that will put the government in charge of monitoring your use of prescription drugs.

According to this AP roundup of new state laws:

Tennessee is requiring pharmacies to report prescriptions to a central data base, where a committee will seek to detect patterns of drug abuse. "We hope ultimately to be able to identify patients early on and prevent them from getting into an abusing situation," said Baeteena Black, executive director of the Tennessee Pharmacists Association.

The new law, effective Jan. 1, 2003, was developed by the Tennessee Board of Pharmacy and will establish a controlled substance monitoring program in Tennessee through establishment of an electronic controlled substance database housed in the Department of Commerce and Insurance within the Board of Pharmacy.

The law, called the Controlled Substances Monitoring Act of 2002, states:

The purpose of the database is to assist in research, statistical analysis and the education of health care practitioners concerning patients who, by virtue of their conduct in acquiring controlled substances, may require counseling or intervention for substance abuse, by collecting and maintaining data as described in this part regarding all controlled substance in Schedules II, III and IV dispensed in this state.

In other words, government snoops will be watching your medical decisions, second-guessing your doctors and deciding you need "counseling."

The snooping will be administered by a "multidisciplinary Controlled Substance Database Advisory Committee made up of fourteen representatives from the Board of Pharmacy, the Board of Medical Examiners, the Board of Nursing and various health-related boards in the Department of Health," according to the TPA. Please note, there is no representative on the board who is an expert in privacy rights.

It is expected to take 12 to l8 months to get the database fully operational. Incidentally, the law makes no provision for you to know what records the government is keeping on your prescription drug use.

The Tennesseee Pharmacists Association lobbied for the new law. All of the sudden I don't feel so bad about Tennessee's 142,000 pharmacists being hit with a $28.4 million tax increase - the doubling of the professional privilege tax to $400 in June 2003.