A curmudgeonly friend writes: Last winter, the Nova Scotia Prescription Monitoring Program ruined my wife’s first vacation in eight years. The Program exists to restrain the abuse of prescription drugs, something I thought prescriptions themselves were for. To this end, among other things, the Program provides the police with information about legal (that is to say legal) drugs you are taking (you may have thought that information was confidential). But the hammer in the Program’s toolbox is its ability to intimidate doctors out of doing what they believe is right for their patients. To wit, from the Program’s FAQ: “If the Program has reason to believe...

22 August, 2012