Arizona city plans to fingerprint pharmacy customers!
PHOENIX, Arizona - January 31, 2011 - An Arizona city's proposed law requiring people buying certain drugs to be fingerprinted has civil liberties advocates concerned about what they say is an unwarranted intrusion on privacy rights.
Facing a growing problem with prescription fraud, the Phoenix suburb of Peoria is considering an ordinance that would require people picking up prescriptions for commonly abused drugs to be fingerprinted.
The law, which would target prescriptions for painkillers such as OxyContin and Percocet, would also require pharmacies to videotape everyone who comes to the prescription counter and keep the videotape for 60 days. Even people picking up a prescription for a family member would have to be fingerprinted.
The Arizona ACLU's legal director, Daniel Pochoda, told a state pharmacy board meeting Monday that the law would turn pharmacies into "annexes for police stations" and would treat people not suspected of any crime as potential criminals.
"The proposed law is not limited to those persons who are suspected of fraud and the great majority of those involuntarily required to be printed will never be subjects of a criminal prosecution," the ACLU said in a statement.
"I don't like labeling patients who take chronic medications as abusers," said John Musil, a pharmacist and member of the pharmacy board. "I don't see why I as a pharmacist am now going to become a law official. That's not what I was trained to do."
But city attorneys and police officials argued the ordinance was necessary to fight a growing problem with prescription drug abuse. The Arizona Republic reported that the number of fraud cases in Peoria has doubled since 2009, from 50 cases to 100.
"We have a problem with fraudulent prescriptions and the value of the pills on the street," city attorney Steve Kemp told ABC channel 15.
