NLARx joined with consumer, physician and seniors organizations including AARP, the New Hampshire Medical Society, Community Catalyst, National Physicians Alliance, and Prescription Policy Choices as a "friend of the court" in support of the State of New Hampshire, which is backing the law. The case is IMS Health Inc. v. Kelly A. Ayotte, Docket #07-1945.

The legislation was sponsored by NLARx member New Hampshire State Reprentative Cindy Rosenwald. "The Attorney General is defending vigorously New Hampshire's compelling public interest in protecting our citizens' health and safety and safeguarding our ability to control expenditures in the health care system," said Rep. Rosenwald.

Since passage of the New Hampshire law, Maine and Vermont have enacted similar legislation to restrict datamining of prescriber information for marketing purposes. Bills are currently pending in several other states including Washington, New York and the District of Columbia.

"The district court was wrong to hold that companies have a first amendment right to monitor prescription records for marketing purposes, and that states can do nothing to address this activity," said Sharon Treat, Executive Director of NLARx and a Maine State Representative. Rep. Treat was a sponsor of Maine legislation similar to the New Hampshire law.

Rep. Treat stated: "States around the country are grappling with the problem of the undue influence of drug industry marketing on the practice of medicine and the effect of this activity on public health, the integrity of the medical profession, and prescription drug costs. Addressing the practice of datamining, as New Hampshire and other states have done, is an appropriate and Constitutional policy response to a growing problem."

Attorney Flynn noted that if the district court's decision is allowed to stand, then a host of laws prohibiting the release or use of consumer data are threatened,including the Driver Privacy Protection Act, Video Privacy Protection Act, Stored Communications Act, Electronic Communications Privacy Act, and Fair Credit Reporting Act. "The future ramifications of giving companies a first amendment right to sell data on all of our purchases, travel and activities are quite staggering," Flynn said.

Rep. Treat noted that the federal government has been slow to address issues of drug industry marketing and influence on the medical profession, and that the states are in largely uncharted territory. Each of the state datamining laws enacted so far - in New Hampshire, Maine and Vermont - has been challenged in court by the industry.

"This is the beginning of a process," said Rep. Treat. "As in past efforts to address abuses in the prescription drug marketplace, the industry is throwing everything it can at the states to stop reform. It is important to remember that the First Circuit and U.S. Supreme Court have acted to reverse lower court decisions on state prescription drug policy in the past. We are hopeful that we will have a positive result in the datamining cases as well." Both MaineRx, a drug discount law, and Maine's pharmacy benefit transparency law, were overturned by the district courts and subsequently upheld by the court of appeals.

The National Legislative Association on Prescription Drug Prices is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization of state legislators from across the country who advocate for lowering prescription drug costs and increasing access to affordable medicines. Legislators from the District of Columbia and all of the New England states plus Pennsylvania, New York, West Virginia, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Texas, Alaska, Arizona, Colorado and Hawaii are members of NLARx. For more information on prescription drug policy and data mining, go to www.reducedrugprices.org.