A compromise on police access to a prescription drug database seems unlikely as the House and the Senate dug into their positions.
Sen. Dick Sears, chair of the Senate Committee on Judiciary, said Wednesday, before a conference committee started discussing the issue, that he did not see much likelihood of an agreement.
Sears, and the Shumlin administration, would prefer that special investigators have increased access to the Vermont Prescription Monitoring System, an online database created in 2006 to track prescription drug data.
A version of the bill that passed the Senate would let police, on a tip from a health care provider, access basic information on Schedule II, III and IV drugs from the Department of Health. The report would disclose the name of the patient, the providers that wrote prescriptions for the drugs, and the pharmacies that filled the prescriptions.
Under the House version, police would need a warrant before getting access to the information.
Sears says the debate has been framed to make it look like police would have direct access to the database, which is not the case under the Senate bill.
“The idea that a police officer is going to sit down in Bennington, go through the prescription drug database and pull out information is not going to happen,” Sears said. “It’s a very limited report. In no way is the Department of Public Safety given access.”
Rep. Ann Pugh, chair of the House Committee on Human Services, stood fast.
“If you have a warrant, you can get information,” she said.
Pugh said her committee took extensive testimony on palliative care and access to prescription drugs.
“We heard testimony that if you allow law enforcement without a warrant to have access to the prescription registry that will have a chilling effect on a doctor’s willingness and comfort level to prescribe drugs to patients who need them,” she said.
Pugh cited statistics from the Department of Health that show the state has improved in some areas of prescription drug abuse — perhaps taking some wind out of the sails of the Shumlin administration, which has touted the prescription drug abuse “epidemic.”
According to a 2008 National Survey on Drug Use and Health report released this year by the Department of Health, Vermont ranked 34th worst among states in the nonmedical use of pain relievers. In 2003, the state was No. 11. Another state report shows a steady decline in nonmedical use of pain relievers during that time.
According to an email by Barbara Cimaglio, deputy commissioner for alcohol and drug abuse programs at the Department of Health, those numbers do not include data about the increase in prescription drug dependence and the increase in people seeking treatment.
Keith Flynn, commissioner of the Vermont Department of Public Safety, said the House version of the bill would “essentially set law enforcement back 100 years in regard to this area.”
Flynn said that in 1904 the state began requiring pharmacies to keep records; it later opened those physical records up to police. Since 1968, police have been able to access pharmacy records by going to actual pharmacies and asking for them (without a warrant). A 1992 Vermont Supreme Court case upheld that right.
Flynn said the way the issue has been framed, as a protection of privacy, misses the mark.
“It’s not really about invasion of privacy because there are no privacy rights in those records and that’s been the law in this state for a long time,” he said.
Flynn said other states, including New Hampshire and Massachusetts, allow greater access to pharmaceutical records than Vermont does.
Allen Gilbert, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Vermont, has taken the opposite view from the beginning.
Gilbert said police should ask for a warrant to access the database, which they have never done. He said new data shows most people who abuse prescription drugs get them from family or friends, rather than peddlers who are “diverting” the substances.
“There is a problem, but the solution to the problem that’s being offered is not really tailored to getting the results people want,” he said.
The conference committee will meet again Thursday at 10 a.m.
