This looks to fit into the same category as receipt checking (sorry in advance for the "pussies" comment in the link's title). Whether or not it's legal (and I imagine a challenge to it would be successful, but IANAL), it's not something any company has the right to do to its customers.

I'd also recommend contacting the Better Business Bureau and the Office of Consumer Affairs at your local district attorney's office if this happens.

I'm not surprised. The same thing happened here in Ontario last year when Plan B went OTC here. On top of collecting the information, they were also tacking on a 'counselling fee' of about $20. Not cool! Feminist groups, the Canadian Medical Association and the media got a hold of it and it blew up into a pretty big story. In Ontario, the provincial Privacy Commissioner met with the College of Pharmacists and they're no longer advising their members to collect the information.

Are there privacy commissions or similar positions at all in the U.S.? They would be excellent people to contact about this.

Some links on the situation in Ontario: Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner/Ontario
The Ottawa Citizen (start from the bottom for chronological order)

I'm interested to hear from someone who has more information than I do, but my first thought was that Target and Wlagreens are probably using the same computer program they already use to track purchases of pseudoephedrine drugs that are also OTC but must be kept behind the pharmacy counter. Several states have enacted laws requiring those cold medicines to be kept behind the pharmacy counter, and set a maximum purchase-per-month in an attempt to limit meth production. Since Target and Walgreens, as major national pharmacies, would already have programs in place to track purchasers under those laws, my suspicion (untested) is that they are using the same program to track data on purchasers of Plan B.

I wonder if they're doing this at the supplier's request. Pharmaceutical companies have a track record of trying to track their consumers. While bul bottles of Viagra are tagged with RFID chips so that Pfizer knows when a prescription is being filled and in what quantity, packs of Diovan, an antihypertensive, are actually tagged individually with the same technology. More often than not, this kind of information is more valuable to pharma-marketers than pharmacists.

I doubt it's at the supplier's request. It might be, but I doubt it. Also, please don't call Plan B over the counter. They're behind the counter--you can't buy them without talking to the pharmacist. When you call them OTC, it makes it seem like the battle is won.

bearcat--was that in response to me? I think categorizing Plan B as a limited-access OTC drug (as I did in my comment) is the most accurate terminology I've come across. For women over 18, no prescription is required--that's what "OTC" generally signifies. Access is limited first through requiring prescriptions for those under 18, and second by stcking it behind the pharmacy counter. But cold medicines stocked behind the pharmacy counter are still generally referred to as OTC. I consider Plan B to be the same thing, and I don't want to give Plan B some mythic status, totally distinct from other limited access OTC drugs. Doing so (1) might give women the false impression that they have to get a prescription first, which could cost them valuable time when that's not a luxury they have, and (2) plays into the antis' hands by treating Plan B as something unique instead of just another safe, effective OTC drug that happens to be kept behind the pharmacy counter--even if it's there for no good reason. FWIW, I also think the practice of keeping pseudoephedrine stocked behind the counter is similarly unjustified.

The pharmacists did the same thing (collecting information) with Donnagel PG (with paregoric) in the 80s due to the opiate content. Opiates work well for diarrhea, but teh drugs you know. They do the same with Advil Cold and Sinus now because meth-heads can use it for making Meth. Unlike those substances, Plan B has no narcotic (habit-forming) effects, and one might point that out when being questioned by ambitious or zealous pharmacists.

Additionally, the request for data may just be the same urge that has retailers asking (requiring) phone numbers or zip codes for any purchase. That corporate desire to collect data should be fought at every turn (especially when health care is involved).

Lots of things that are "OTC" have to be handed over the counter by a pharmacist. I bought a kit to test glucose tolerance and CVS had signs on the shelves saying they were only available from the pharmacy. The reasons may be various, including supplier request.

I agree with the commenter who said that it has to be made clear that Plan B is "OTC". No over 18 year old should mistake that they need a doctor's prescription.

I don't visit pharmacies often. In fact, I've rarely been sick in my life, and when I was sick or injured, I was in bed while one of my parents when to the pharmacy. And any time I have been to the pharmacy, it has been to accompany one of said parents and buy some AAA batteries. (A CVS (formally an Osco) here has some ridiculously cheap AAA's, a 16 pack for about $6.)

But since I started learning about pharmacists who refuse to sell contraception, and now this, I've made a vow that if I'm in a pharmacy and I see this shit going on or even if I hear it from a woman, I'm going to confront the son of a bitch behind the counter and give him what for. This is bullshit.

i live in canada, where plan b has been available otc for some time now.
when i obtained the drug over a year ago, they did ask me several personal questions; information about my sexual history, information about the specific sexual encounter that caused me to go purchase the drug.
but this definitely isn't the case for all drugs kept behind the counter that are sold as otc. for example, i'm iron deficient; i need to take an iron pill every day or else i feel absolutely exhausted (among other things). iron pills are sold otc, but pharmacies keep them behind the counter and you need to ask for them from the pharmacist in order to purchase them. i was told that this was to keep people from overdosing iron (who is doing this? and i'd be very interested to hear about the side effects). i have never been asked any personal questions when i go to buy iron pills (i've never been asked anything beyond "what kind?"), and yet they are sold the same way.
so make no mistake--the survey is all about plan b, and nothing else: no doubt about it!