Firefighter union, gay rights group join suit against DEA
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/oct/13/firefighters-gay-rights-group-to-push-back-on-dea-/
SALT LAKE CITY (AP) – A Utah firefighters union and a gay-rights group can face off against the Drug Enforcement Administration in a court fight over warrantless searches of a prescription drug database similar to those kept by most U.S. states, a federal judge decided Thursday.
The databases containing all controlled-substance prescriptions for every patient are designed to help doctors and police curb abuse, but unfettered police access to them has raised concerns.
The group Equality Utah argues warrantless searches violate the privacy of transgender people whose hormone medications are recorded in the database. The firefighters union, meanwhile, says two members were wrongly accused of prescription drug fraud after a wide-ranging, warrantless search.
U.S. Magistrate Judge Dustin Pead decided Thursday the two groups can add their privacy and social justice arguments to a lawsuit between the DEA and the state of Utah.
DEA lawyers say the agency should be exempt from a new state law that requires police to get a warrant before accessing the database.
Utah is among the minority of states that require police to get a warrant before a search, a change sparked in part by the firefighters’ case. They were charged after police investigating ambulance drug thefts ran hundreds of names through the system on a hunch that it might be an inside job.
The two men weren’t connected to the thefts, their relatively high number of prescriptions raised suspicion and prosecutors filed fraud charges. The case was later dropped, but still put their careers and personal lives at risk, they said.
Their case shows why police shouldn’t be able to access the nearly 70 million records in Utah’s nearly 20-year-old database, said the ACLU’s Nathan Freed Wessler, who is representing the firefighters and Equality Utah. They contain records of prescriptions for medication like the anti-anxiety drug Xanax and the sleep aid Ambien as well as prescription painkillers, he said.
“That’s a mind-boggling quantity of highly sensitive medical information,” he said.
But the DEA says the database is an important tool in the early stages of their investigation, like one they’re conducting into a Utah medical provider suspected of supplying pills to an organized crime group.
Federal attorney Kathryn Wyer fought unsuccessfully to keep the Utah groups from intervening in their lawsuit against the state, arguing agents are only asking to use the database for a specific investigation that has nothing to do with them. The prescription-drug industry is already highly regulated and the database has no expectation of privacy, she said.
“People expect their prescription information is going to end up in this database,” Wyer said. “There’s a statue that says so.”
Filed under: General Problems
Going after the gay community will rally some strong troops against the DEA. Believe me they know how to fight. I will give them credit for that.
We all need to stand together we are fighting for the same thing. We are tired of being discriminated against. We need more people to take back being a proud nation not the little Hitler (DEA) group. We don’t want people like them being paid by this country. They have got way to big for their britches.we need to take their power away then start firing them. I think we can. Just don’t give up. We can do it.
I think as more people learn of this the more angry they will get and demand change. In MN every prescription is monitored not just certain drugs. That means you will have a lot of angry people if this get abused. But you records are private and that should automatically be implied. In fact the dea should not even have access without a warrant.
When are we going to wake up. All you medical records just went out to whoever. No one did anything to help fight this. Every sate will now have the same problem.maybe insurance companies will raise your rates now that they have all the data in one spot for then to easily research.
When is someone going to stop the DEA. We have to take away people having that mush power over the people .we have gave them to much money and to much power.