By DAVE GRAM
Associated Press

Vermont lawmakers want to make it much tougher for drug company sales representatives to court doctors with free lunches and other perks designed to get their products into patients' medicine cabinets.

The work came two weeks after Attorney General William Sorrell's office issued its annual report on drug marketing efforts in the state. The report said drug companies spent nearly $3 million in Vermont in consulting fees, meals, gifts and similar expenses directed at doctors and other prescribers in the year ended June 30. But under a "trade secrets exemption" in the 2002 law, the attorney general couldn't say who was paying for or getting the food, cash payments and other gifts.

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