January 24, 2004
US to treat seniors who purchase foreign prescriptions same as heroin users.
As you may have heard, the Bush administration, using as their tools the FDA, which is now pretty much owned and controlled by the large pharmaceutical corporations, is moving to make the purchase or possession of prescription drugs purchased from outside the country illegal. While most attention on this focuses on the fact that they want to force to pay people much more for drugs that they could purchase much cheaper elsewhere, underlying this is the fact that they are in effect making foreign pharmaceuticals a "controlled" substance, and that they will begin prosecuting those who sell, purchase or possess them the same as they do heroin or crack dealers and users. Maybe not quite yet, but they are moving in that direction. They seriously intend to enforce their new rules, and that means arrests and prosecutions and jail terms. The first step is to declare them "dangerous" and "unsafe" and then to move from there. They do this one step at a time, but all of the legal precedents are in place, and their intention is clear, so now it's just a matter of time.
See this NY Times article,
F.D.A. Begins Push to End Drug Imports, on the latest moves by the FDA. It's rather frightening, especially the fact that they are going ahead with this despite open and vigorous opposition by local government officials across the country.
A second "blitz" inspection by federal drug and customs officials of medicines imported from Canada has found that nearly all of the almost 2,000 packages opened contained foreign versions of American pharmaceuticals that officials said might not be safe.
... The inspections, whose results are to be formally announced next week, form part of a coordinated push by the Bush administration to stop drug imports and defuse a budding confrontation between Washington and the states.
The city governments of Springfield, Mass., and Montgomery, Ala., are already helping buy drugs from Canada to save money for themselves and their employees. And officials in more than a dozen states and scores of towns, cities and counties have said that they may do the same.
The F.D.A. commissioner, Mark McClellan, said in an interview that the results of the inspections, which took place in November, demonstrate that drugs ordered from Canada are often manufactured in distant corners of the world. After an earlier survey, the agency announced in September that most of the imported drugs it inspected were counterfeit knockoffs. Neither round of inspections included any chemical tests on the drugs.
Asked if the pills reviewed in the latest survey were unsafe, Dr. McClellan answered, "We just don't know, because it's so hard to tell."
Governors and mayors leading the charge for Canadian drugs flatly dismiss Dr. McClellan's safety concerns. Many point out that even though the value of drug imports from Canada probably topped $700 million last year, the F.D.A. has yet to identify a single patient harmed by the trade. And they say that Health Canada, which regulates drugs in Canada, is just as rigorous as the F.D.A.
"This has little to do with health and safety and everything to do with the pharmaceutical industry," said Peter A. Clavelle, mayor of Burlington, Vt., who said he intended to have a Canadian drug purchase program up and running for city employees and their families by March 1.
This is going to become a major campaign issue. And it's not just Democrats who are fighting it.
Some state officials say a showdown is inevitable.
"This is all going to come to a head in 2004," said Gov. Tim Pawlenty of Minnesota, a Republican. "Either the F.D.A. will sue somebody or throw someone in jail over this, or the pharmaceutical companies choke off supply, or the F.D.A. comes to their senses."
I guess a lot of things are going to come to a head in 2004.
