by Gabriel Levitt, President, PharmacyChecker.com and Prescription Justice | Feb 22, 2019 | Big Pharma
This week, Wendell Potter, healthcare
advocate and publisher of non-profit media outlet Tarbell, called out a slew of
drug industry experts for undermining efforts to lower drug prices. This
includes the likes of Sally Pipes of the Pacific Research Institute, the
Alliance for Safe Online Pharmacies, and the Partnership for Safe Medicines.
All use the specter of counterfeit drugs and the opioid crisis to scare the
American public away from safe personal importation via online pharmacies.
Recipients of Drug Company Donations
Who is called out?
- Sally
Pipes, from the Pacific Research
Institute, because in an op-ed opposing drug importation, Ms. Pipes
obtusely connects Americans ordering drugs from Canada with the many tragic deaths
in low-income countries from
counterfeit drugs.
- The Alliance
for Safe Online Pharmacies (ASOP) for peddling false information about
World Health Organization studies and counterfeit drugs.
- The Partnership
for Safe Medicines (PSM) for using the opioid crisis as a tool to oppose
importation of regular, less expensive prescription medicine.
(more…)Tagged with: Alliance for Safe Online Pharmacies, Partnership for Safe Medicines, Sally Pipes
by Gabriel Levitt, President, PharmacyChecker.com and Prescription Justice | Nov 16, 2018 | Big Pharma
This week, I attended ASOP Foundation’s symposium titled: “Spotlight on Illegal Online Sales of Medicine.” ASOP is short for the Alliance for Safe Online Pharmacies. That organization, which started with funding from Eli Lilly and the National Association of Chain Drug Stores, has often received criticism on these blog pages. Like other Pharma-funded initiatives, its goals are aligned with the pharmaceutical industry and one of its main objectives is lobbying against personal drug importation. It often conflates, through its public education programs, safe international online pharmacies with dangerous rogue websites. However, a good part of its work is helping raise awareness and policy development to stop rogue sellers of counterfeit and substandard medicines from harming patients, and that’s something PharmacyChecker is 100% behind.
Much of ASOP’s work was the brainchild of LegitScript, a founder of ASOP. Truth be told, PharmacyChecker is the expert in safe international online pharmacies and providing consumers with useful guidance about them, but LegitScript/ASOP are the experts in rogue online pharmacies and pushing policies to shut them down. It’s disheartening that they seemingly refuse to separate safe importation from rogue online drug sellers. But I’ll put that aside for now.
I’m going to focus today’s post mostly on presentations by two high-ranking FDA officials. The first was the morning’s keynote speaker, Donald Ashley, JD, FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research Director of Compliance. His focus was the FDA’s efforts to combat illegal opioid sales online and those being imported through international mail facilities. I’ve written about how such actions can be used against safe personal drug imports. While that would be unfortunate, Mr. Ashley was meticulous in communicating that his efforts are strictly focused on opioids: shutting down fentanyl and other opioid-selling sites; detecting and stopping illegal opioid imports; and, through the Office of Criminal Investigations, charging and prosecuting these online opioid drug dealers.
(more…)
Tagged with: Alliance for Safe Online Pharmacies, U.S. Food and Drug Administration
by Gabriel Levitt, President, PharmacyChecker.com and Prescription Justice | Jun 13, 2018 | FDA enforcement
For years, the pharmaceutical industry and the FDA have used the global problem of counterfeit drugs to lobby against importation of lower-cost prescription medicines. They have used the online sale of controlled drugs without a prescription as a pretext to curtail online access to licensed pharmacies in Canada. And now they’re using the opioid addiction and overdose crisis as well. So, when I learned that there will be a meeting hosted by the FDA, a “Summit” to address the problem, my radar went up. What is this really about, and who has a seat at the table?
The event is called “FDA Online Opioid Summit: Reducing Availability of Illicit Opioids Online.” I have no doubt that the participants genuinely want to stop illegal opioid sales on social media sites and rogue pharmacy sites, but Panel #1 is essentially the usual pharma suspects from the Alliance for Safe Online Pharmacies, who spent about half a million bucks lobbying Congress to stop prescription importation legislation that doesn’t even allow imports of controlled substances at all. Since 2009, that group has been pushed by Eli Lilly on the Obama administration to shut down safe international pharmacies under the guise of going after rogue sites and counterfeiters. (more…)
Tagged with: Alliance for Safe Online Pharmacies, Enforcement, opioids
