Drug Importation is Fraught with Peril

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.

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Florida Woman Injected Clients With Counterfeit Botox At Illegal Med Spa

After receiving a tip in November 2017, police search the home that Diane D’Anca was operating an illegal med spa out of. Inside, police found a “large amount” of medical supplies and records for 100 clients. In a refrigerator in the garage, they found several vials of Botox she injected into clients that turned out to be counterfeit…

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National Boards of Pharmacy Finds only 4.2% of Online Pharmacies Are Safe

The National Association of Boards of Pharmacy (NABP) has just released their Internet Drug Outlet Identification Program Progress Report for State and Federal Regulators: August 2017, outlining the current state of fake online pharmacies that sell to U.S. patients.

Out of 11,688 Internet drug outlets reviewed, the NABP found that 11,142 (95.8%) were “operating out of compliance with state and federal laws and/or NABP patient safety and pharmacy standard practices.”

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Canada Drugs Indictment: Six Canadians Arrested & Facing Extradition

Almost three years after the original grand jury indictment in November 2014, the owner of Canada Drugs and five of his co-conspirators were arrested on June 14 and 15 in Canada under the Extradition Act, reports CBC News. Kristjan Thorkelson, Thomas Haughton, Ronald Sigurdson, Darren Chalus, Troy Nakamura, and James Trueman have been arrested in…

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