Editorial: Open our borders to legal drugs

Wednesday, March 31, 2004 | 8:44 a.m.

The federal government has stubbornly refused to allow American citizens to buy prescription drugs from Canada, Mexico and other countries. The incentive for bypassing our own neighborhood drug stores in favor of foreign purchases is obvious -- price controls enacted by other countries mean prescription drugs there are up to 70 percent cheaper at the retail level. With millions of Americans struggling to afford the medicines that can relieve their pain and prolong their lives, there is growing pressure on Congress to end the ban on foreign drugs. We're happy to see that the pressure is having some effect.

Members of both the House and Senate are fielding more and more questions from their constituents on the order of, "What are you going to do about high drug prices?" Resultingly, momentum is building now toward a bill that would allow Americans to import drugs. An example is this month's Senate approval of Dr. Mark McClellan to head the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Sen. Bryon Dorgan, D-N.D., led a movement to block the nomination unless Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., agreed to consider a drug "reimportation" bill -- so called because many of the drugs now disallowed were originally manufactured in the United States but then exported.

The government's rationale for denying Americans access to less expensive drugs from over the border has always been safety. McClellan, for example, as head of the Food and Drug Administration, was vociferous in opposing any loosening of the ban on foreign drugs, saying the FDA could not guarantee their purity. This argument has always been suspect and is now collapsing entirely, as globalization means more and more foreign manufacturing by American drug companies. Dr. Marcia Angell, former editor of The New England Journal of Medicine who is now writing a book on the drug industry, told CBS News: "There is no reason that buying drugs in Canada is any less safe than buying them in the United States. ... Pfizer, for example, has 60 manufacturing sites in 32 countries. So the drugs are made all over the world. They're sold all over the world."

It's time for the federal government to stop allying itself with the drug industry, which has showered Washington with campaign contributions and lobbying expenses in helping to perpetuate the safety myth. Drug prices in this country are higher than anywhere in the world, a fact that greatly benefits the pharmaceutical companies but harms the budgets of American citizens. Governmental budgets are not spared either, as at all levels they are strained by the high cost of prescription drugs provided through Medicare and Medicaid. We need a bill that will allow people and governments to shop around at all reputable sources, wherever they may be.