Drug Importation is Fraught with Peril

As a licensed pharmacist, I’m all too familiar with patients’ difficulties getting medications they need and their physician has prescribed. As baby boomers age, pharmacists see more patients at our counters unable to obtain needed treatments for heart disease, high blood pressure, diabetes, and other chronic illnesses. This issue is now being acknowledged and a healthy debate has begun over possible solutions. But one idea policymakers shouldn’t pursue is opening up our country’s secure drug supply to medicines coming from outside our borders.

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Doctor Warns That The Risk Of Purchasing Counterfeit Drugs Online Is Growing

This editorial by Dr. Warren Willey was published in Idaho State Journal on July 7, 2018. Dr. Willey is an osteopathic physician who lives and works in Pocatello, Idaho. Dr. Willey says counterfeit drugs are becoming more commonplace and that people need to only purchase their medications from within the U.S.’s secure drug supply chain…

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Educating Patients and Doctors on the Dangers of Counterfeit Medicines

In a recent series about the counterfeit medicines problem, Life Science Leader focused on organizations, including the Partnership for Safe Medicines (PSM), that are working to educate the public and keep counterfeit medicines from hurting people.

Dr. Marv Shepherd, president of the PSM and professor emeritus at the University of Texas at Austin’s School of Pharmacy, said, “I see improvement in industry efforts to stop counterfeiters, but I don’t see improvement in results.”

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UK Study Finds Fake Online Pharmacies May Feed Antibiotic Resistance

A small-scale study in the United Kingdom has found that 75% of the assessed online pharmacies that offer drugs for sale in the UK are unregistered as legitimate pharmacies, and most offer antibiotics without a prescription. This finding could be a serious driver of microbial resistance. Obtaining Antibiotics Online from within the UK: a Cross-Sectional…

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Many medications are cheaper in America than in Canada: Generic Crestor

All the proposals by politicians to allow drug importation have overlooked something huge: most FDA-approved generics are just as affordable or cheaper in the U.S. as they are in Canada. We called several brick-and-mortar Canadian pharmacies asking about prices and found that a 30-day prescription of 10 mg tablets of the generic version of Crestor…

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US Agencies Find Counterfeit Drugs a Growing Danger in 2017

The Justice Department, the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) are concerned about Americans illegally purchasing prescription medicines from foreign sources. According to News Channel 10, investigations are underway to protect Americans from these potentially dangerous substances. The Justice Department has been looking at the data and as…

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