Former FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb condemns importation proposals and points out Florida’s sordid history with wholesale counterfeit drugs

Today at the National Press Club former FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb addressed the issue of importation and specifically talked about the irony of Florida attempting to do it. Commissioner Gottlieb reminded us that the reason we have the pedigree system we’re implementing now (Track and Trace) is because criminal wholesalers in Florida in the early…

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Economist questions the fundamentals of importation: “It flunks a basic policy analysis.”

In this editorial published on April 26, 2019, Douglas Holtz-Eakin, economist and President of American Action Forum, questions economic truths about drug importation:

“Drug reimportation has long been the fool’s gold of health policy, and the Florida bill is no different. It flunks a basic policy analysis. But most amazing, it is drafted to raise hope, but not actually help Floridians.”

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Journalist on drug importation: “There is a real risk.”

In this piece published in the Washington Free Beacon on April 25, 2019, staff writer Charles Fain Lehman explores issues around Florida’s drug importation proposal. “Critics,” he notes, “fear that the actual realities of regulatory oversight—especially in the hand of an as-yet-unnamed private vendor—will simply be too challenging to manage responsibly.”

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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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