Silliness Abounds...

I find it truly sad that certain folks, in their rush to politicize even the most unspeakable of tragedies (Monday's brutal slaughter at VT), will find a way to twist even innocent (and potentially useful) government programs to their own ends.

As regular IB readers know, I am most decidedly not a big fan of most gummint-run health programs. One which had previously flown beneath my radar was the National All-Schedules Prescription Electronic Reporting Act of 2005. This rather innocuous program provides funding for states to adopt registries reporting schedules II-V controlled substances (spam-email things like ritalin, valium, xanax, adderall, vicodin, and oxycontin) but the most commonly prescribed antidepressants like prozac, lexapro, zoloft, effexor, etc are schedule six and thus not considered controlled substances.

The VT murderer was apparently prescribed some of the former, and ABC News investigated to see why that didn't send some kind of signal to the authorities before something bad occurred. Unfortunately, a "progressive" blog decided to take ABC's poorly-worded reporting at face value, and we're treated to the latest shibboleth:

"We learned yesterday that the Bush administration has created a database of every single prescription drug user/patient in the country (that would pretty much be all of us). The database was created pursuant to a 2005 law that was intended to prevent the abuse of prescription drugs. Funny that this massive new database of your private medical information is now being (ab)used for a purpose that wasn't intended in or approved by the law."

The rest of the post goes on in that vein, with the conclusion that the evil administration has a database of every prescription any American has filled.

Right.

I'm also expecting my check from Bill Gates (you HAVE been forwarding those emails, right?), and my windfall from that nice Nigerian fellow.

I truly wish that folks would just apply common sense to these things.

Yeah, Prof, dream on.

UPDATE: Just spoke with a pharmacist (client) about this, and he confirmed that Class I drugs are NOT reported (except as insurance claims, but that's a different story). Class II drugs are reported to the state (which, last time I looked, is NOT the federales). So much for the latest cause du jour.