dr.e

“FDA investigators recently purchased three commonly prescribed drugs from a Web site advertising “Canadian Generics,” which had been sending “spam” emails promoting its products. The products purchased were so-called “generic” versions of Viagra, Lipitor, and Ambien. None of the three products has a U.S.-approved generic version, and so all three drugs were unapproved.”

“The test results of our analyses offer proof positive that buying prescription drugs online from unknown foreign sources can be a risky business. As was the case here, even where a website looks legitimate, FDA has clear evidence that the Web site is dispensing misbranded drugs that are not the same quality as those approved by the FDA for sale in the United States. “

So, we're talking about different things. An arthritis patient from Albany can snick across the border and pick up absolutely authentic and high quality American drugs at a big discount. Allow Americans to buy from legitimate Canadian sources and the “bogus” site problem mostly goes away. FDA could even link to a few, like THIS. See? Now how hard was that?

You bit on the propaganda.

The Democrats used the term re-importation to make it sound like all of the drug purchased from Canada were manufactured in the U.S. The problem was that there is no regulatory authority that would force the drug sellers in Canada to obey Canadian law if all they are doing is exporting (they would not need a Canadian license to operate) and no regulatory authority in the U.S. to make companies operating in Canada to follow the law of the U.S.

The FDA did a few quickk trials by purchasing drugs that were alleged to be from Canada. The quickly found out that the companies were really in different countries and the drugs were manufactured all over the world and in many cases were made in factories that were no licensed by the FDA.

The ideas of re-importation and Canada were used because it imply things about overseas medications that should not be assumed.

I also found it odd that the Democratic Party method of making healthcare cheaper was to off-shore drug manufacturing.

Also far from the national consciousness is the devastating affect of the pine bark beetle which will almost certainly decimate the forests of the entire Rocky Mountain region. This is the result of the drought, which robs the trees of their ability to produce enough sap to expel the insects and climate change which has reduced the number of severe winters to the point that now the bark beetles are too deep in the trees to be killed off even if we should return to having severe cold snaps. The unprecedented flooding in the Midwest and increasing ferocity of hurricanes due to warmer Gulf waters are all warning signs of, as Churchill put it “a time of consequences.”

SD, the “drug reimportation” issue was about Americans buying less expensive drugs from Canada, not China. These drugs are typically produced in the United States and sold to Canada at deeply discounted prices in order to boost monthly and quarterly sales figures. Drug companies can't have it both ways. They want and need the income and sales, then participate in the deception that these “imported” drugs may not be manufactured to the same quality standards as “American” drugs.

The article you linked to it actually admits this point:

“Drug manufacturers have responded by tightening sales to Canada in the hopes of discouraging American consumers and turning up the pressure on Canadian officials.”

Is the implication here that American drug companies sell to Canada unsafe drugs which would be dangerous for Americans to use? Drug companies sell their products, the same products produced in the same factories, all over the world. And they sell them for different prices in different places. This is a global marketplace and I personally want to be able to buy pharmaceuticals for the lowest price at which a drug company can turn a profit. Clearly if they could not make a profit at the lowest prices they sell for, it wouldn't sell for that.

In this case, “reimportation” is not 1984-speak. The drugs Americans are buying from Canadian pharmacies, and even most from Mexican pharmacies, are either exported to those countries by PhRMA members or produced, as are many of our drugs, in their facilities overseas. All major PhARMA companies are now “multinationals”, and only 4 of the top 10 are headquartered in the USA (1,2,9 & 10).

SD, perhaps you think Pfizer or Bayer has lousy factories producing unsafe drugs for Canada and Mexico and shining FDA-compliant facilities to make drugs for the American market. If so, I'd sure like to see some evidence of that. So would Canada.

Thanks for the link. I hope you get a chance to look at my work at the National Catholic Reporter too.

And 're-importation' ? How very 1984-speak. Boy.

dr.e

I find it odd that people are complaining about the effects of a program that they were supporting a few years ago.