Maryland Pharmacists Association Director: Importing Drugs May Endanger Patients

This editorial by Aliyah N. Horton, the executive director of the Maryland Pharmacists Association, was published in the Baltimore Sun on July 19, 2017.

In it, Horton points out the “huge public health risk” posed by buying imported drugs, and urges legislators to vote against unsafe drug importation, and to “seek other avenues to improve patient access, safety and drug affordability.”

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Former FBI Director Discusses the Dangers of Allowing Drug Importation in Radio Interview

Freeh warned that allowing drug importation from Canada was akin to allowing drugs to be imported from anywhere. Quality would be at risk, and the opioid crisis, an epidemic that killed over 33,000 Americans in 2015, would only get worse. He said that allowing drug importation, “…will not only fuel that, but it will also, in my opinion, encourage a lot of criminal groups and organizations that heretofore have not been involved in this trade, but will see huge opportunities to enter the market.”

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Biotechnology Innovation Organization CEO Warns Against Drug Importation

In a July 14, 2017 editorial for STAT, Jim Greenwood, the president and CEO of the Biotechnology Innovation Organization (BIO), reminds us that the safety risks of buying prescription medicines from other countries are real:

“The debate about drug importation has been underway for decades. Those who support it have never advanced a responsible plan that would provide the same level of health and safety protections that the FDA has delivered for decades. Its rigorous system of rules and protocols ensure that prescription drugs in this country are safe and effective. It protects those high standards by preventing the sale of imported prescription drugs that are not approved for use in the U.S.”

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Maine pharmacist: U.S. lawmakers should say no to drug import legislation

A few years ago, Maine introduced similar legislation that allowed patients to buy drugs from foreign pharmacies. We, too, wanted to provide patients with lower-cost medicines.

It proved to be a big mistake. Instead of getting drugs from Canada, we got dangerous and ineffective counterfeit pills from other countries. Maine’s disastrous experience with counterfeit Canadian drug imports should serve as a lesson to our lawmakers to say no to drug importation legislation.

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Importation Endangers Law Enforcers Warns Sheriff Keith Cain

During my law enforcement career, spanning four decades, I have spent a great deal of time investigating crimes related to illegal drug use and trafficking. The growing scourge of methamphetamine and opioid use is unlike other crimes I have prosecuted in the past. It has literally changed the way we protect our citizens and officers. In addition to the traditional equipment carried by an officer, they must now equip themselves with Naloxone to counteract the effects of an opioid overdose, thusly, amending our existing policies has become necessary.

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President of the International AntiCounterfeiting Coalition Warns That Importation Will Open the Door to Drug Counterfeiters

In the midst of a nationwide epidemic of opioid addiction fueled by illicit smuggling of drugs from overseas, and coming on the heels of a year in which U.S. Customs and Border Protection seized over $73 million worth of counterfeit medicines at our nation’s ports, some members of Congress have suggested a novel approach to these growing threats: “opening the floodgates.”

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Former Head of FDA-OCI: “Proposed drug importation law will worsen U.S. opioid epidemic”

The Philadelphia Inquirer published this editorial by George M. Karavetsos, a partner with the global law form DLA Piper, and former director of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration Office of Criminal Investigations.

Proposed Drug Importation Law Will Worsen U.S. Opioid Epidemic
More than 60,000 Americans died from drug overdoses last year. Fentanyl, a synthetic opioid 100 times more powerful than morphine, caused one-fifth of those fatalities. Local law enforcement and health professionals are working at a feverish pace to prevent fatal overdoses. Even librarians in drug-plagued neighborhoods . . .

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Counterfeit Cosmetic Treatments are Injuring and Killing U.S. Women

A series of recent cases across the country illustrate how dangerous unlicensed and counterfeit cosmetic treatments can be. Having filler injected should be considered a medical procedure, not a cosmetic treatment. The FDA has NOT approved liquid silicone or silicone gel for injection to fill wrinkles or augment tissues anywhere in the body.

In the last two months, three cases illustrated just how dangerous it is to seek beauty treatment injections from anyone other than a licensed medical professional . . .

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FDA Regulation Keeps Both our Food and Medicines Safe

When policymakers talk about drug importation, they often make comparisons to importation of food. “If we can import produce safely,” they say, “don’t tell me we can’t import medicine.”

The truth is that importing food safely is difficult. The stakes are even higher when we import medicine: no one expects lettuce to cure cancer . . .

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