Jennifer Oliva on Prescription Drug Policing

In this episode, Jennifer D. Oliva, Associate Professor of Law at Seton Hall University School of Law, discusses her new article “Prescription Drug Policing: The Right to Protected Health Information Privacy Pre- and Post- Carpenter,” forthcoming in the Duke Law Journal. Prof. Oliva begins the discussion explaining how common inaccuracies in understanding the current overdose epidemic (focusing on prescription drug use rather than illicit drug use) exacerbates the crisis. She then explains how this erroneous understanding has precipitated the creation of state prescription drug monitoring programs (PDMPs), which collect and maintain data on every dispensed prescription while collecting massive amounts of protected health information (PHI). Professor Oliva then details how these PDMPs mainly serve as a law enforcement rather than a public health tool, introducing greater amounts of surveillance into the life of the American public. She then discusses search and seizure law under the Fourth Amendment and its applicability to warrantless police seizure of PDMP information while arguing that such searches and seizures are illegal both under pre- and post-Carpenter. She closes by issuing a warning to listeners, urging them to remember how much of their most private information is made public given common technologies. Professor Oliva's scholarship is available on SSRN and she is on Twitter at @jenndoliva.

This episode was hosted by Maybell Romero, Assistant Professor of Law at Northern Illinois University College of Law. Romero is on Twitter at @MaybellRomero.

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