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 editorial, published in The Missouri Times on March 11, 2019, Gregg Keller warns that “the issue at hand is not so much the safety of Canadian drugs but the dangers of the global drug trade. Often, pharmacies that claim to be “Canadian” are anything but.”
In this March 5, 2019 editorial, published on the National Association of Manufacturers blog, Robyn Boerstling, the organization’s Vice President of Infrastructure, Innovation and Human Resources Policy, raises concerns about Florida’s drug importation proposal.
It isn’t just policymakers who believe drug importation will open the U.S. drug supply to counterfeits. In this editorial, published in the Times of Northwest Indiana on March 6, 2019, HIV-positive advocate Brandon Macsata explains that his own physician objected to ordering medicine from Canadian online pharmacies:
“It never crossed my mind that I might have been taking counterfeit medicine, or that the medicines meant to control my HIV could be compromising my immune system. So when my doctor found out, she told me to stop immediately. She warned me that online pharmacies often sell counterfeit drugs.”
The Canadian Pharmacists Association (CPhA) and the American Pharmacists Association (APhA) have issued a joint statement in opposition to U.S. federal legislation authorizing personal and commercial importation of prescription drugs from Canada.
“While we recognize the desire to address affordability issues in the U.S.,” they write, “we strongly oppose the importation of prescription drugs from Canada because of the risks these policies pose to patient safety and
continuity of care.”
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In this February 4th, 2019 editorial for Colorado Politics, Denver resident Ali Schroer warns, “I experienced firsthand the dangers of counterfeit, imported drugs, and was critically ill for months as we sought to uncover the source of my illness.”
In this editorial, which first appeared in The Washington Times on January 29, 2019, former FBI Director Louis J. Freeh revisits the problem drug importation poses to law enforcement and regulatory systems already overburdened by the opioid crisis.
In this January 30, 2019 editorial, which was published in the National Association of Manufacturer’s Shopfloor blog, Vice President of Infrastructure Robyn Boerstling warns that even though legislators have good intentions, importation could “result in disastrous outcomes.”
In a January 23, 2019 editorial published in The Hill Peter Pitts, a former FDA associate commissioner and the president of the Center for Medicine in the Public Interest, explains why the safety risks of importation far outweigh any savings.
In this editorial, which was published in The Salt Lake Tribune on December 10, 2018, former DEA agents Javier Peña and Steve Murphy, warn that importing prescription drugs from other countries is “an extremely risky enterprise with potentially tragic consequences.”