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, which appeared in Inside Sources on November 20, 2018, former chief superintendent of the Ontario Provincial Police Don Bell discusses the threat that gang-backed fentanyl trafficking poses to the U.S. and Canada, and emphasizes the importance of working together to secure the border.
The Partnership for Safe Medicines applauds the passage of the SUPPORT Act, an $8 billion package which will help develop non-addictive painkillers, improve prescription drug monitoring programs, establish comprehensive opioid recovery centers, and strengthen Customs and Border Protection’s ability to intercept fentanyl that is illegally shipped into the United States.
In this October 16, 2018 for Drug Topics, Alliance of Safe Online Pharmacies advisor Libby Baney and pharmacist and American Pharmacists Association CEO Thomas Menighan discuss the risks to public safety posed by drug importation.
In this October 10, 2018 editorial for The Hill, publishing executive warns that America has nothing to gain and everything to lose if we forsake our secure drug supply chain for allowing the importation of dangerous drugs…
In this September 17, 2018, editorial for The Detroit News, the Center for Medicine in the Public Interest’s President and co-founder Peter Pitts warned that legalizing prescription drug importation will not generate massive savings for U.S. citizens while also potentially exposing millions of Americans to dangerous counterfeit drugs…
There are certainly things we can learn from other countries’ healthcare successes, but importation is not the right approach.
This distressing situation shows that deadly fentanyl analogues are killing Americans who are using laced non-opioid prescriptions.
In this August 21, 2018 editorial for the Havre Daily News Canada Border Services Agency and the Ontario Provincial Police veteran Don Bell talks about the need for Canada and the United States to work together to combat counterfeit drugs.
On August 8, 2018, the National Sheriffs’ Association wrote the President to oppose prescription drug importation. Importing drugs from other countries, they say, “jeopardizes law enforcement’s ability to protect the public health and endangers the safety of law enforcement and other first responders.”
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.