The plan immediately raised concerns about privacy.

House Majority Leader Rick Quinn, R-Columbia, won approval for the database as a Ways and Means subcommittee wrapped up work on temporary law changes that will be part of the state budget.

Quinn told the panel that the database, operated by the state Department of Health and Environmental Control, would help cut down on prescription drug abuses. For instance, he said, police would be able to catch people who visit multiple doctors for treatment of the same malady and get prescription drugs that they then resell.

The legislation affects Schedule II through V drugs. Those are the harshest legal-narcotics, such as morphine, down to cough syrups with codeine.

"It seems very overreaching for the government to be tracking prescription drug use of all health care recipients in our state," said Sue Berkowitz, executive director of the South Carolina Appleseed Legal Justice Center.

The budget amendment says different groups could access the data:

-- Pharmacists, for the prescriptions they issue.

-- Patients, for the prescriptions they receive.

-- State regulators investigating pharmacists.

-- Grand juries with a subpoena.

-- Law officers investigating abuse of legal drugs.

Quinn's proposal requires no subpoena or warrant for law enforcement access to the information. People who improperly disclose database information face a fine of no more than $5,000.

"Law-abiding citizens should not have their records gone through just because law enforcement wants to check them," Berkowitz said.

"Usually to get that information you have to have some probable cause to believe something is wrong," said House Minority Leader James Smith, D-Columbia. Most people don't like the idea of government "creating these vast warehouses of data for the purpose of surveilling people's habits without any suspicion or the reason to believe that may-be something criminal is going on."

There's more than human drug trade at issue. The measure affects prescriptions for "the person or animal" getting medicine.

In going after drug dealers, House Republicans are hitting the privacy of all "South Carolina citizens, not to mention their pets," Smith said.

"It's a sad day for animals everywhere," said Rep. Todd Rutherford, D-Columbia. They're not likely to show up in the Statehouse lobby to protest, he said. "How do you stop big brother looking in on your animals?"

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