Letter: Canadian drug plan risky, unsafe

Sunday, Jan. 8, 2006 | 8:13 a.m.

Nevada's new attorney general, George Chanos, nailed it in his recent opinion that the state Legislature's new law allowing Nevadans to purchase cheap but potentially fake or tainted prescription drugs from Canadian Internet "pharmacies," which are not regulated by the Food and Drug Administration, is a violation of federal law.

At question was what the Legislature wrote in its bill earlier this year regarding "FDA approval." According to proponents, FDA approval means any drug the FDA has approved for sale in the U.S.

According to Chanos, rightly, FDA approval means not just approving a particular drug for sale, but approving the source or manufacture and method of distribution. Anybody can label a vial of pills and call it by the name of an officially approved FDA drug, but that doesn't make it so.

Nor does it mean the drug hasn't been tampered with before being shipped to Canada from Upper Bulgaria or Lower Freedonia and then sold to some unsuspecting granny in Elko.

A Las Vegas Sun editorial states that Chanos should have honored the "intent" of the Legislature, which in the Sun's mind was to provide a source of cheaper drugs. But let's face it, the intent of the Legislature here was to score political points with a segment of the voting population that turns out in big numbers every election cycle. That their decision could potentially kill people was just a risk they were willing to take. After all, they won't be ordering their drugs over the Internet.

Chuck Muth

Carson City

Editor's note: The writer, executive director of the Nevada Republican Party from 1995 to 1996, is president of Citizen Outreach, a policy organization that promotes limited government.