[Mb-civic] NYTimes.com Article: Illinois to Help Residents Buy Drugs From Canada, and Afar

Tue Aug 17 11:08:26 PDT 2004

The article below from NYTimes.com 
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Illinois to Help Residents Buy Drugs From Canada, and Afar

August 17, 2004
 By MONICA DAVEY 

CHICAGO, Aug. 16 - Opening a new front in the fight over
the cost of prescription drugs, Gov. Rod R. Blagojevich of
Illinois is preparing to help residents of his state buy
cheaper medicines from Britain and Ireland, as well as
Canada. 

Aides to Mr. Blagojevich, a Democrat, said he would
announce on Tuesday that Illinois would create a program,
accessible on the Internet, so people could buy 100 of the
most common drugs for 25 percent to 50 percent less than in
most American drugstores. 

Federal authorities say it is illegal to buy drugs from
outside the United States, but since early this year,
officials in at least four other states - Minnesota, New
Hampshire, North Dakota and Wisconsin - have set up Web
sites that link residents to Canadian pharmacies. Expanding
the market to Britain and Ireland, Mr. Blagojevich's aides
said, will spread demand beyond Canada, where some
suppliers have reported shortages of certain drugs. 

"The drug companies have pretty aggressively been shutting
supplies to Canada, and we want to ensure that the supply
will meet the demand," Abby Ottenhoff, a spokeswoman for
Mr. Blagojevich, said. "Ultimately, they can't shut down
supplies to the world to keep prices high in the United
States." 

William K. Hubbard, an associate commissioner for the Food
and Drug Administration, said Mr. Blagojevich's plan
"sounds like yet another expansion of an effort to import
unapproved drugs from foreign countries that will be
illegal under U.S. law and will raise serious concerns on
the part of the F.D.A." 

The notion that Illinois was reaching even beyond Canada,
Mr. Hubbard said, made matters worse. "The more they go
into other countries, the more concerns we have," he said. 

Illinois' move is the latest in what has become a
political and economic standoff over how Americans buy
their drugs: the F.D.A. and drug companies contend that
medications from other countries may be counterfeit,
mislabeled or otherwise unsafe, while a growing number of
local and state officials argue that their residents must
be allowed to buy the least expensive drugs. 

Illinois plans to contract with a Canadian company to
create a clearinghouse of more than 35 approved pharmacies
and wholesalers in Canada, Ireland and Britain. The state
hopes to first reach the estimated 2.8 million Illinois
residents who have no prescription drug coverage. If only
100,000 of them bought drugs through the clearinghouse,
they would save as much as $29 million a year, Ms.
Ottenhoff said. 

Wanda Moebius, a spokeswoman for the Pharmaceutical
Research and Manufacturers of America, which represents
drug makers, said Illinois would not be able to guarantee
that drugs said to be from Britain or Ireland really came
from there. "We have serious safety concerns," Ms. Moebius
said. 

The Illinois program is designed for state residents only.
Customers will have to provide billing and shipping
addresses in the state. 

Minnesota, the first state to start a Web site, in late
January, had 117,000 visitors to its site by the end of
July. Other states are using different methods to press for
change. Vermont authorities have announced that they plan
to sue the F.D.A. for rejecting their plan to bring
Canadian drugs to their residents. 

"On this issue, you can see the waves lapping up at the
fortress," said Gary C. Hufbauer, a senior fellow at the
Institute for International Economics. "The question is,
What will they do about these waves?" 

The F.D.A. considers it illegal to buy drugs, or cause the
sale of drugs, from other countries, but so far the agency
has not taken legal action against states with Web sites
that help people get drugs from abroad. 

Mr. Hubbard said he could not say whether the agency might
take legal action against Illinois because he had not seen
details of its plan. 

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/17/national/17drugs.html?ex=1093766106&ei=1&en=6f954a93810350c9

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