Politifact ignores the world of criminal counterfeiters

Politifact.com emailed us this week with questions about a recent ad about the dangers of attempting to import medicine from Canada. They labeled it negatively, but we noticed that they ignored certain facts while coming to their conclusion. In the interest of fairness, we’ve published below both the email from Politifact and our heavily sourced response. Judge for yourself if legislators in Florida are being naive about the risks of importation in a world with a highly evolved criminal counterfeit scheme.

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New PSM ads highlight concerns of FDA Commissioner Gottlieb about the dangers of Florida’s importation legislation

Tallahassee, FL (April 18, 2019) – Today the Partnership for Safe Medicines released new ads to run in several parts of Florida that highlight the dangers of Florida attempting to import medicine from Canada. Five different commissioners of the US Food and Drug Administration, appointed by both Republicans and Democrats, have stated that such proposals are dangerous to patients, will expose them to counterfeits, and are unlikely to reduce the price of medicine.

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The Wall Street Journal’s Editorial Board Comes Out Against Drug Importation

The editorial board of the The Wall Street Journal published this editorial on April 15, 2019. In it, they write:

“The argument that drug importation threatens the integrity of the drug supply is often dismissed because pharmaceutical lobbyists make it. But keeping the drug supply free from contaminated or counterfeit products is not easy, and the World Health Organization has warned that 1 in 10 medical products in the developing world are phony. It isn’t clear who is liable if counterfeits are found in Florida, but you can bet it won’t be the politicians.”

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Drug importation makes law enforcement’s job harder, says former FDA-OCI director

In this editorial, which was published in The Gadsden Times on April 11, 2019, former FDA-OCI director George Karavetsos points out the real dangers of drug importation:

“Even today, Americans are being hurt and even dying because of counterfeit medications being imported into this country. Adding insult to injury, while some might point to Canada as being a safe source, counterfeit medications are transshipped through Canada from other countries in remote corners of the globe.”

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