The Harold Rodgers Prescription Drug Monitoring Program

Have you undergone recent surgery, had an injury, or just been the untimely victim of a tooth extraction? Well, you could soon be the object of a government investigation. The Harold Rodgers Prescription Drug Monitoring Program uses an electronic tracking system - the likely origin of many Drug Enforcement Administration investigations - to help find and bust prescription drug abusers. Congress appropriated, in 2004, an additional $2 million dollars for the program's coming fiscal year. The deadline to states and manufacturers to comply is coming up: January 1, 2009. So, is this tracking system is another vicious attack on American's rights to freedom and privacy?

What does the system do? Whenever you fill a prescription for a Schedule II drug (Percodan, Vicodin, Lorcet and Ritalin among many others), your name goes straight into an electronic file that is shared with numerous government agencies

Did I say name? I apologize. I meant to say your name, date of birth, the date the drug was dispensed to you, the quantity of the drug, the number of supply-days for which the prescription provides, and whether the prescription was called in or presented in writing. Such a system, so stealthily instituted and so unwarranted, is a gross violation of your privacy and an omen of more to come.

You may be thinking, so what? At least they're not recording my bank numbers; but ask yourself: do you want attorneys general, local prosecutors, state and local police, members of state regulatory boards, dentists, pharmacists, doctors and others to have access to this information? Didn't think so.

Proponents of this infringing program argue that it is necessary and helpful. They say there is need for a means of tracking prescriptions for schedule II drugs because these drugs are subject to abuse. Well, anyone that went to public high school knows that aerosol spray cans are subject to abuse, too; but swat teams aren't busting into Home Depots to impound sales receipts there, are they?

It is one thing when the government violates a citizen's privacy based on some "real" evidence, or during a legitimate investigation; however, this systematic breach of all American's rights to legally and privately obtain prescription drugs is repugnant. It harkens back to the days of J. Edgar Hoover when no one was safe from personal invasion, and shows blatant disregard for that most cherished of American ideals: one is innocent until proven guilty. After all, does not the government assume we are all guilty by suspicion when our names fall with a thud to the bottom of their databases?

Clearly, the sad day has already arrived, when the government ceases to be accountable to its citizens, and its citizens become accountable to it. Mark these words: such infractions (more soon to be added to the Patriot Act) are not minor, nor irrelevant, but herald much more. First the medicines we take, yes, but what's next? The food we eat? The phone conversations we have? This is a slippery slope, and it grows only steeper with time. Find some roots now to grab onto. Catch your rights as they go out the window, and as you do, look up to the sky and wave-that's where "they'll" be tracking you from soon.