Editorial: Honor the intent of drug law

Thursday, Dec. 29, 2005 | 8:20 a.m.

Nevadans who are paying exorbitant prices for prescription drugs will not be able to legally buy them at deep discounts from Canada if the state Pharmacy Board is swayed by a legal opinion rather than by state legislators.

In June, during a special session, the Nevada Legislature passed a law authorizing the Pharmacy Board to set up licensing agreements with some Canadian pharmacies. The agreements would allow those pharmacies to sell prescription drugs to Nevadans at discounts of up to 50 percent.

Wording in the law, however, specified that sales were limited to only those drugs that had been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. It is this wording that forms the basis of an opinion released Tuesday by Nevada Attorney General George Chanos.

The Pharmacy Board had requested the opinion because there are differing interpretations of FDA approval. Does it mean that the FDA has generally approved of the specific contents of a drug? Or does it mean that the agency guarantees the authenticity of each drug by overseeing its packaging and documenting its journey from manufacturer to wholesaler to retailer to consumer?

Citing a September letter from the FDA, which takes the drug industry's side in opposing Canadian drug sales to U.S. citizens, Chanos chose the latter interpretation. He concluded that no one in Nevada could ever verify that the FDA had been involved in all of those steps regarding drugs coming from Canada.

Assembly Majority Leader Barbara Buckley, D-Las Vegas, who sponsored the law, and Sen. Joe Heck, R-Henderson, a physician and the law's champion in the Senate, say Chanos' opinion strays widely from their intent. Heck told the Las Vegas Sun that the intent of "FDA approval" was to safeguard against Nevadans receiving drugs that had made their way into Canada from other countries, drugs whose formulations had not been approved by the FDA.

The Pharmacy Board will decide on the attorney general's nonbinding opinion at a future meeting, at which Buckley and Heck are expected to testify about the Legislature's intent in passing the law. We believe the Pharmacy Board should side with the legislators who were the driving force behind the law.