Former Florida AG: Importing prescription drugs could worsen opioid crisis

Bill McCollum. Source: www.orlandosentinel.com

Bill McCollum, former Florida Attorney General and member of Congress wrote about the danger of drug importation in the Orlando Sentinel on August 8, 2017.

 Importing prescription drugs could worsen opioid crisis

Recently in the Orlando Sentinel, we heard the story of Daniel and Heather Kelsey, a local young married couple who tragically died of an overdose en route to see family last New Year's Eve, leaving their three young children stranded for hours in the car alongside the slumped bodies of their parents.

Daniel and Heather are just two of thousands of victims of the escalating opioid crisis that has left countless families broken and promising lives wasted in its wake. The crisis is dire, and it is accelerating.

As a former Florida attorney general and member of Congress, I know firsthand how stretched local law-enforcement budgets are and how law-enforcement officials already struggle to contain the flood of illegal drugs flowing into the United States from other countries. Unfortunately, a proposal that's under serious consideration in Washington, D.C., could inadvertently make the problem much, much worse.

Bills before Congress would end a longstanding ban on the import of prescription medicines not previously cleared by the Food and Drug Administration. Although the proposals were floated to curb rising drug prices, the unintended side effects of this policy would pose a daunting challenge for law enforcement.

Simply put, opening the U.S. market to foreign drugs would create a massive new burden on law enforcement to inspect those imports, while also giving "plausible deniability" to many types of activities that are currently suspicious on their face.

Americans have access to safe and effective prescription drugs due in large measure to the current strict safeguards the FDA has established to approve new treatments and monitor the manufacturing and distribution of existing medicines. Meanwhile, patients in many other countries are exposed to substandard medicines produced and sold with less-rigorous oversight. Those conditions have spawned an already massive — and still growing — market for counterfeit drugs all over the world.

Those dangerous knockoffs are starting to infiltrate the U.S. market. The FDA website lists a number of counterfeit drugs seized in the United States. These imitations include fake Botox, fake Cialis, and a number of fake cancer drugs. Organized-crime syndicates have established sophisticated networks to produce and sell these counterfeit drugs in other countries. They have already started working through doctors and medical clinics in the United States, but U.S. import restrictions are a big reason the FDA, U.S. Customs and the DEA have been able to contain the problem, until now.

The bills before Congress would remove many of the license and oversight requirements on the drugs imported into the U.S. by lifting those barriers. This would invite an influx of bogus pharmaceutical products from the same crime rings that are selling these drugs in other countries around the world that would love better access to the U.S. market. One of the biggest killers is fentanyl, a potent, synthetic opioid pain medication that is being laced into counterfeit pills. It's also what killed Daniel and Heather Kelsey that cold December night. Since fentanyl is a legal pharmaceutical drug with legitimate purposes, opening the gates for foreign drugs would mean allowing the commercial transport of fentanyl across our borders.

Opening the door to increased prescription drug importation will just make it easier for smugglers to ship this dangerous opioid into the United States. For years, we have asked police officers and prosecutors to do more with less. There are few signs that austerity will end. Changing laws to encourage importation of drugs would only add to that burden.

Regardless of one’s views on addressing the cost of drugs, hopefully we can all agree that exacerbating the opioid crisis is not an outcome we want.