A new SmartMoney.com article entitled Ten Things the FDA Won’t Tell You reaffirms what we’ve reported in the past – when it comes to drug importation for personal use, the FDA generally does not intervene. “Feel free to buy drugs across the border,” the article’s subhead reads. And the FDA confirms, “The agency focuses enforcement only on imports that are intended for resale.”
However, purchasing imported or domestically sold drugs through online pharmacies requires consumer caution, as fraudulent rogue online pharmacies abound. Importantly, the SmartMoney article also references a study conducted by Roger Bate of the American Enterprise Institute and published in the Public Library of Science, which confirmed that drugs sold on the internet that had been properly verified by either the PharmacyChecker.com Verification Program or the National Association of Boards of Pharmacy’s VIPPS Program sell genuine medication and require a prescription.
While the FDA can stop drug imports at the border, it nearly always allows shipments of up to 90 days worth of personal supplies of non-controlled drugs to pass. Our Vice President, Gabriel Levitt, is cited in the article, “Almost all prescription orders personally imported reach the consumer.” PharmacyChecker is confident that though the law technically prohibits personal drug importation, the government rules with compassion and pragmatism on this specific issue. SmartMoney’s article suggests that they know it too.
If we have safe and effective verification programs in place, and a general understanding of right and wrong when it comes to drug access and affordability, many American patients would greatly appreciate and benefit from the government’s official green light for personal drug importation. Could support from officials like Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IW) and Congressman Ron Paul (R-TX) finally make that happen? We sure hope.
