Thursday, Jan. 5, 2006 | 7:21 a.m.
Nevada Attorney General George Chanos and Assembly Majority Leader Barbara Buckley, D-Las Vegas, argued in unusually rude terms Wednesday over the divisive topic of importing low-cost drugs from Canada.
"I'm attacking Miss Buckley because ... she has perpetrated, in my opinion, a cruel hoax on the senior population," Chanos said of a law Buckley helped pass last year that intended to allow Nevadans to buy low-cost drugs from Canadian pharmacies.
"Now I understand Mr. Chanos is desperate here," Buckley said.
"He's desperate not to take the fall," she said, referring to an opinion Chanos issued last month that held the law to be invalid.
The exchanges occurred during a taping of "Face to Face With Jon Ralston," which airs tonight on Las Vegas ONE.
Buckley and Chanos haggled over the intent and language of the bill and each came armed with bound volumes of the legislative history. Chanos described one individual who testified in favor of the legislation -- Minnesota's human resources director -- as a "shill" who did not represent the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
Chanos: "She wanted to walk out of that legislative session with a victory. And she didn't care whether she had sound legislation or ineffective legislation. She knew or should have known, if she was a lawyer, that that bill was fatally flawed from the day it walked out of the legislative session."
Buckley: "If you just ignore the legislation based on legal semantics, you are doing a disservice to the thousands of people who supported this bill."
The issue could come to a head on Jan. 12 in Las Vegas. That's when the State Board of Pharmacy is scheduled to discuss the conflicts between Chanos' opinion that drugs from Canada don't meet FDA regulations and an opinion from the Legislative Counsel Bureau that the state program would comply with FDA standards.
On Wednesday, however, the argument swerved sharply from legal merits as the two rarely looked each other in the eye.
Chanos: "What is disturbing about this is that Miss Buckley knows as a lawyer, or should know if she were a good lawyer, she would know..."
Buckley: "Whoa!"
Chanos: "That the Nevada Supreme Court can only look at what's in the legislative record. She did not make a record. What she is saying today she did not put in the record.
"She chose poor language and she failed to make a record and her bill is dead as a result of it, and she wants to lay it on my doorstep."
Buckley, arguing that the intent of the law was to allow importation only of drugs whose compounds had been FDA-approved, accused Chanos of issuing an "absurd" interpretation of the new law.
"There are a few legal principles that the attorney general isn't pointing out," Buckley said. "In looking at legislative intent, you must avoid absurd results. The fact that the legislation is on the books shows that the Legislature intended a program. I must confess, we never envisioned that anyone would give such an absurd intent to this language.
"Everybody in the Legislature knew what this program was about. Anybody who watched TV knew what it was about. The history is clear that we intended to allow seniors and others to import affordable drugs from Canada. The fact that our seniors are paying double and triple what they're paying in Canada is a disgrace."
Chanos defended himself and said his opinion reflected an earlier opinion on the same topic issued by his predecessor, Brian Sandoval, who is now a federal judge.
"What they all intended clearly from the legislative history was not simply that you would bring in affordable drugs from Canada, but that you would bring in FDA-approved drugs from Canada," he said.
"That's what the governor wanted. That's what the Legislature wanted. That was the clear intent of the Legislature. Our opinion is consistent with that clear intent. Therefore, it does not arrive at an absurd result."
The show airs at 5:30, 6:30, 8 and 10:30 tonight.
Steve Kanigher can be reached at 259-4075 or [email protected].
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