The Drug Enforcement Administration hopes to access Oregon’s Prescription Drug Monitor Program database in an effort to curb drug abuse, causing privacy concerns, The Daily Beast reports. The agency is fighting a 2014 U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruling that decided warrantless seizure of the data was illegal. The DEA countered that as the PDMP is a third-party data host, users shouldn’t have an expectation of privacy, the report states. Not everyone agrees. “The primary purpose of PDMPs is health care, not law enforcement,” said the American Medical Association in an amicus brief. The database wasn’t created to be “a tool or repository for law enforcement to initiate access to gather information,” the AMA added.
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