Sens. John McCain and Barack Obama both declared recently that
they’d rethink their support for foreign drug importation,
largely because of repeated scares about contaminated drug
supplies.
That’s an encouraging development. The U.S. currently bans bulk
drug imports, but if that ban were lifted, millions of
unsuspecting patients could find themselves with dangerous
counterfeit drugs in their medicine cabinets.
There is plenty of evidence that counterfeit drugs are a serious
problem in the global market. For example, Belgian officials
recently seized more than two million fake painkillers and
anti-malarial pills being shipped to Africa from India. It was
the largest counterfeit drug raid in European history.
Disturbingly, the counterfeits almost slipped through, as
inspectors decided to test the drugs only after noticing spelling
mistakes on the labels.
“Thanks to this seizure, we have saved lives,” said Lieven
Muylaert, spokesman for Belgium’s customs department.
That’s no exaggeration. According to Oxford’s Centre for Tropical
Medicine, the trace amounts of anti-malarial ingredients
contained in fake drugs like those seized can cause the malaria
parasite to develop immunity to genuine doses and make it more
difficult for patients to recover.
The events in Belgium should give pause to American lawmakers
pushing to legalize foreign drug importation. Clearly counterfeit
drug makers have grown adept at circumventing regulators. If bulk
imports were allowed, these drugs could easily have made their
way to the U.S. market.
Currently, pharmaceutical companies are required to protect the
supply chain for the drugs they produce, starting with the
manufacturing plant, through the distribution channels, and on to
pharmacists, physicians, and patients in the United States.
If European and Canadian suppliers could introduce other drugs
into the U.S. supply chain, it would be impossible to tell if the
medicine came from a FDA-inspected facility or from an unsanitary
plant in Bangladesh.
These concerns are real. The World Health Organization estimates
that 10 percent of today’s global medicine supply is counterfeit.
If importation were legal, drugs like those seized in Belgium
could easily put U.S. consumers at risk.
Importation is made even more dangerous by the European Union’s
system of “parallel trade,” wherein pharmaceuticals pass freely
among EU nations. This allows multiple opportunities for
counterfeits to infiltrate the supply chain. A drug sold in
Britain could have been produced in China or India and shipped
through Belgium, Latvia, or Cyprus.
It’s refreshing to see the presidential candidates reconsider
their stances on importation in light of the mounting evidence of
its dangers. Let’s hope they and other legislators continue to
put Americans’ safety first by standing against the dangers of
foreign drug importation.
