Op-eds: Canadian and American regulators, law enforcement and patient advocates oppose drug importation
Since 2000, every head of the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and United States Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has opposed drug importation because the benefits that might be gained are far outweighed by the many dangers. Law enforcement, patient advocates, pharmacy groups, and regulators agree.
In this May 31, 2018 editorial for The Daily Caller, pharmacoeconomic expert Dr. Marv Shepherd explains the concrete reasons why the importation of drugs from other countries as a means to lowering prices in the U.S. is both unsafe and economically unsound.
By approving the wholesale reimportation of U.S. prescription drugs from Canada, the Vermont Legislature passed an illegal measure that will not lower drug prices. Instead, it will subject Vermonters to public health risks and new taxes to defray an inevitable federal lawsuit.
In this editorial, which appeared in the Austin American-Statesman on April 27, 2018, Georgia resident Lisa Hicks warns readers about the counterfeit prescription pills that killed her son in 2015:
“One needn’t be an addict to die from an overdose..Joe had a solid job and was studying for a degree in exercise science…One day, he pulled a muscle at the gym. He was in serious pain, so he bought what he thought were prescription painkillers from a friend. Those pills turned out to be counterfeit. And they contained a deadly amount of fentanyl. The next day, my son was gone.”
A nonprofit executive wrote in this April 20, 2018 editorial that America needs to concentrate on keeping counterfeit drugs, including those made with fentanyl, from crossing our northern border just as much as the southern…
In a March 29, 2019 editorial, Charles “Sam” Faddis discussed the importance of not overlooking the effects that fentanyl, and especially counterfeit medicines made with fentanyl, is having on the opioid crisis in America…
In this opinion piece published March 10, 2018 in Medicine Hat News, Dr. Kristina Acri, an academic and senior fellow at the Fraser Institute, discusses the problem of counterfeit drugs in Canada…
Other countries, even advanced countries like Canada, don’t provide the same level of protection. From April 2016 to March 2017, Canadian agents discovered more than 5,500 packages of counterfeit drugs in their midst. Loosening importation restrictions would expose American patients to potentially deadly counterfeit pills.
In a February 16, 2018 editorial for the Salt Lake Tribune, BioUtah President and CEO Kelly Slone explained that importing medicines from Canada would “open the door to dangerous counterfeit medicines,” and “dampen job growth in Utah’s vibrant, dynamic life-sciences industry.”
In this editorial, which was published in the Deseret News on February 11, 2018, economics professor Dr. Kristina Acri warns that drug importation will expose Utahns to dangerous counterfeit drugs.
“After more than two decades of studying the economic and health impacts of drug importation,” she writes. “the verdict on bringing drugs in from Canada is clear and consistent: It’s a risky gamble and one too dangerous to take. Experts know that preventing the introduction of dangerous counterfeit medicines cannot be guaranteed.”
Nationally recognized addiction expert, Dr. Indra Cidambi, who is the Medical Director of Center for Network Therapy, was interviewed about the threat of counterfeit prescription opioids on February 8, 2018. She said that pressed pills are causing a new wave of overdose deaths among people who believe the “label” on counterfeit drugs, and trust that they know the potency of the pills.