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medpundit |
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Wednesday, August 04, 2004In a report released in St. John's yesterday, the task force recommended the provincial cabinet authorize health officials to release to police information on individuals suspected of criminal activity to feed their drug habit. 'Currently the police are limited in their ability to initiate investigations and access information,' said Newfoundland Justice Minister Tom Marshall. If approved, the unusual move would allow health officials to release information only if there is evidence of criminal activity, Marshall said. The Newfoundland government will consider the recommendation this fall, Health Minister Elizabeth Marshall said. 'There's a concern with respect to people's right to privacy and we're trying to balance that against the public good.' Sure and that will be a fertile ground for lawyers, deciding what constitutes "evidence of criminal activity." A good argument could be made for allowing access to pharmacy sales records in cases like this, but not to hospital or doctor records. There's often a lot of other, unrelated information in doctors' treatment notes that would have nothing to do with the crime at hand and which would be nobody's business. Even drug abusers see doctors for legitimate reasons now and then, after all. And they don't usually schedule separate appointments for their genuine medical problems and their drug-seeking ones. posted by Sydney on 8/04/2004 07:58:00 AM 0 comments 0 Comments: |
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