How illegal is it to give your prescription medicine to another person (in any amount)? Is it expressly illegal to give even one pill of a prescription medicine you have to another person? If so, what law says this, and under what terms? If not, what are the minimum terms, for example, amount, before giving someone else your prescription medicine becomes a crime? And even then, how prosecutable / prosecuted is this? At what amount does one begin to see people actually arrested or charged with something? But hypothetically, might law enforcement still pursue and investigate an instance of sharing a very small amount, if they got a report saying it had happened? This could be in any country, but I can specify the US if it needs a focus, but I prefer a global / international / comparative perspective.
germany How illegal is it to give your prescription medicine to another person (in any amount)? Under the conditions: you are a private person you are giving (not selling) it is not, in itsself, illegal to give your prescription medicine to another person. OLG Stuttgart, Beschluss vom 18.01.2012 - 4 Ss 664/11 - openJur Nur die berufs- oder gewerbsmäßige Abgabe von Arzneimitteln, die apothekenpflichtig oder von einem Arzt verschrieben worden sind, an Endverbraucher außerhalb von Apotheken unterliegt der Strafbarkeit nach §§ 95 Abs. Abs. 1 Nr. 4, 43 Abs. 3 Satz 1 AMG. Die Abgabe verschreibungspflichtiger Arzneimittel an Verbraucher ist nach § 96 Nr. 13 AMG nur strafbar, wenn der Handelnde Apotheker oder eine sonst zur Abgabe von Arzneimitteln befugte Person ist. Das Tatbestandsmerkmal der Berufs- oder Gewerbsmäßigkeit bezieht sich auf sämtliche Tathandlungen des § 97 Abs. 2 Nr. 10 AMG. Die unerlaubte Abgabe auf Grund ärztlicher Verschreibung erworbener Betäubungsmittel an einen Dritten ist nicht von § 4 Abs. 1 Nr. 3 a BtMG gedeckt. 3a: auf Grund ärztlicher, zahnärztlicher oder tierärztlicher Verschreibung, Only the professional or commercial sale of pharmaceuticals that are sold in pharmacies or have been prescribed by a doctor to end users outside of pharmacies is subject to criminal liability under Sections 95 (1) No. 4, 43 (3) sentence 1 AMG. According to § 96 No. 13 AMG, the supply of prescription drugs to consumers is only punishable if the person acting is a pharmacist or another person authorized to supply drugs. The constituent element of professional or commercial activity refers to all acts of § 97 para. 2 no. 10 AMG. The unauthorized supply of narcotics acquired on the basis of a doctor's prescription to a third party is not covered by § 4 Para. 1 No. 3 a BtMG. 3a: on the basis of a medical, dental or veterinary prescription, Sources: OLG Stuttgart, Beschluss vom 18.01.2012 - 4 Ss 664/11 - openJur Medicinal Products Act (Arzneimittelgesetz – AMG) §43 - Pharmacy-only requirement, placing on the market by veterinarians §95 - Penal Provisions §96 - Penal Provisions §97 - Provisions on administrative fines
There is, as far as I can see, no Crown exemption from the sale of goods acts (including the International Sale of Goods Conventions), but unfortunately for this patient the NHS has no liability either in logic or in law. The doctor provided a written prescription, for which there is no charge, and which allows patients to buy certain drugs. The patient took the prescription to a chemist's, which (for money) provided the drug specified in it. Even if the patient had noticed that the prescription was for the wrong form of medicine, the pharmacist has no discretion to alter it; if the prescription specifies tablets, the patient can either buy the tablets or not buy them and take the prescription back to the doctor. In neither case has either the doctor or the chemist committed any conceivable offence regarding sale of goods. (There might theoretically be a case for negligence, but it would never be worth either suing a doctor for an £8 prescription fee or reporting him to the authorities for writing a prescription for the right drug in the wrong form).
Assuming you mean methamphetamine, then the answer is no. It is illegal to drive with any amount of methamphetamine in one's body. The main Minnesota law on driving while impaired (DWI) is Section 169A.20 subdivision 1: It is a crime for any person to drive, operate, or be in physical control of any motor vehicle, as defined in section 169A.03, subdivision 15, except for motorboats in operation and off-road recreational vehicles, within this state or on any boundary water of this state when: [...] (7) the person's body contains any amount of a controlled substance listed in Schedule I or II, or its metabolite, other than marijuana or tetrahydrocannabinols. The schedules of controlled substances are at Section 152.02. Methamphetamine is listed in Schedule II (subd. 3 (d) (3)). However, there is an exception if you were taking the substance as a prescription. Section 169A.49 subd. 2: If proven by a preponderance of the evidence, it is an affirmative defense to a violation of section 169A.20, subdivision 1, clause (7) (presence of Schedule I or II controlled substance), that the defendant used the controlled substance according to the terms of a prescription issued for the defendant in accordance with sections 152.11 and 152.12. Note that since this is an affirmative defense, the burden of proof falls on you to prove that you had a prescription, and that you were using the substance according to its terms (e.g. taking only the prescribed dose). In particular, if your doctor or pharmacist told you not to drive while taking it, then that would seem to say that you were not using the substance as prescribed.
There is a world of legal difference between a doctor or counselor "pressing" you to consider meds and even suggesting several and them actually writing a prescription. The line to cross is a non-doctor writing you a prescription for prescription meds; this has not yet happened. And 99.99% of the time, it won't happen. The counselor is licensed by the state and will clearly know their legal limits, which are an important part of their education and licensing; they are not going to risk their license or a lawsuit by doing something illegal. If the counselor is a doctor and is able to write prescription, then they will ask you about medical history and other meds during a formal clinical visit in order to write the prescription. If you feel the counselor may be pressing you too hard to consider meds, he may be crossing an ethical line, but that's entirely different than breaking the law. Determining if he crossed an ethical line is for his licensing board to consider, not you. You can ask the licensing board how to proceed. Ask the counselor for their license number; they will freely give it and tell you who to contact.
They're not actually billing people different amounts because they have insurance or not. Doctors can pretty much bill a patient whatever they want for their service, similar to how a grocery store can charge whatever they want for their fresh deli cheese. Generally, they charge every single person the same amount. It just gets discounted depending on the insurance you have and how much they're willing to pay. One of the huge benefits of having medical insurance (outside of them paying for your medical expenses) is that they build contracts with service providers, known as their network. Those contracts specify prices (both preset and algorithmic) for certain services that you receive through those providers - the insurance provider will only pay that much and the doctor cannot charge the patient more than what is paid. If a claim was processed through a different insurance provider, the price will likely be different since each provider will have a separately negotiated contract with different price points for different services. It's not a system of "this is the insured price and this is the uninsured price" but rather a system of "this is the contract you established saying you'd accept this much from us for this service." For an uninsured person, though, you have no insurance provider and more importantly no provider contract backing you up. So you'd have to face the full force of the non-discounted price of those services. You'll face the same problem even with insurance if you go out-of-network, where the provider does not have contracts and therefore will only cover up to a certain amount that they would normally pay out for a similar service, requiring you to cover the rest of the amount of whatever the doctor decided to bill for that particular service. Without that insurance contract preventing the doctor from billing you the remainder of what they'd normally charge, you'll likely be slapped with a bill for that remainder. Directing back at your original question: there is no reason that a medical provider would ever legitimately bill someone a different amount because they are insured or not, thus there are no laws preventing it. It's that they already agreed to accept this certain amount from patients covered under this specific insurance. Again, they bill every patient the same amount - the insurance company is just saying "we're giving you this much and the rest of this, yeah that needs to go away." If you've ever looked at an EOB (Explanation of Benefits) from your insurance company, you'll see that the actual billed amount from the doctor is almost always much, much higher than what is actually paid out by you or the insurance, often known as the insurance discount. Maybe you'd rather think of it as a coupon?
I'm not going to comment on the specifics of this law; rather, I think this question shows a misconception of the way the legal system works in general. Here's the question: do you actually have "legally privileged" material on your phone? If not, what's keeping you from claiming that is that it's not true, and lying to a police officer is a bad idea. And just putting a letter from your lawyer on the phone doesn't mean you've established a legal privilege--attorney-client privilege is not a magic spell, it's a reasonable system of protection that only covers certain communications. The bottom line is: the statute in general, and that clause in particular, were included in the law to protect real, important, and substantial legal right. The courts interpret the law in light of that purpose. If the police officer finds a solution that protects your rights while still carrying out the purpose of the statute, the court will be unlikely to fault him or her. In this case, if you tell the officer that there is a letter from your attorney in a particular folder, the obvious solution is for the officer not to open that folder. Problem solved. In practice, in the United States at least, these cases are dealt with routinely; computers are seized, and attorneys and judges work together to ensure that privilege is protected while still allowing reasonable access to seized materials. I would imagine the same is true in the U.K. The bottom line is: the law is not a game, and technical "gotchas" are rarely effective. Common law systems allow judges enough leeway to avoid this sort of pointless technicality.
In the Netherlands, this qualifies as a deceptive trade practice (misleidende handelspraktijk) and is therefore directly illegal. It's likely also an unfair trade practice, (oneerlijke handelspraktijk) as the claim appears intended for end consumers. This means that the seller cannot count on the consumer knowing anythong about stuffase. It is a dutch implementation of EU directive 2005/29/EG, so similar laws apply in other EU countries. But the illegal per se part might vary.
It is not absolutely against the law to produce schedule 1 substances (such as marijuana). Per 21 USC 822(a)(1), Every person who manufactures or distributes any controlled substance or list I chemical...shall obtain annually a registration issued by the Attorney General which entails specific permissions to make, distribute etc, under (b). If you turn to the prohibitions in 21 USC 841, it starts the list of prohibitions saying "Except as authorized by this subchapter, it shall be unlawful...". The code is liberally littered with the expression "unauthorized". The Attorney General is given authority under 21 USC 811 to make rules, thus can permit production. It's not actually clear who the grower is in the Compassionate IND program. In the Randall case, the "doctrine of necessity" was apparently invoked successfully which led to charges against Randall being dropped. The legal details of the AGs blind eye towards states like Washington are a little hazy, as it were.