This Memorandum assesses the legality, under Minnesota law, of physician prescription and pharmacy sale of injection equipment to patients who are known to be injecting illegal drugs. It assumes that ensuring a patient's access to sterile injection equipment is clinically effective and conducive to public health, ethical, and constitutes only one facet of the care the patient is receiving from the physician. The risk of malpractice liability is discussed in a third companion piece, Professional Liability in the Prescription and Dispensing of Sterile Injection Equipment to IDU Patients , by Maxwell Mehlman. Sales of limited quantities of clean needles and syringes. At any location where hypodermic needles and syringes are kept for retail sale under this subdivision, the needles and syringes shall be stored in a manner that makes them available only to authorized personnel and not openly available to customers.
Violation is a misdemeanor.
The Minnesota courts have stated that the drug paraphernalia statutes must be read to require a finding that the seller or possessor intends the items be used as for the consumption of controlled substances. No guidelines have been given of what proof is necessary in order to prove the necessary intent. Analysis Minnesota's legislature has legalized the possession of up to ten hypodermic apparatuses. Syringes in this number can be prescribed, dispensed, and purchased without violating any law. This memo therefore focuses on whether the prescribing and dispensing of syringes in numbers greater than ten is legal in Minnesota .