by Gabriel Levitt, President, PharmacyChecker.com and Prescription Justice | Dec 29, 2017 | Drug Importation
Words matter when it comes to drug importation
As we close out 2017, personal drug importation via online pharmacies remains a viable lifeline for American patients who can’t afford prices at their local pharmacies. Recent FDA actions against pharmacy storefront offices in Florida, ones that help Americans buy more affordable meds internationally, are troubling. On a positive note, a backlash against that crackdown by members of Congress, including Senators Bill Nelson (D-FL), Chuck Grassley (R-IW), and Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) has begun and will certainly grow. But what’s most on my mind is the FDA’s vocabulary about drug importation and how people tend to confuse certain terms.
In its efforts against personal drug importation, the FDA tells the public that it’s protecting them from misbranded and unapproved drugs. Those designations sound scary and who would want such drugs? Well, Americans would. The fact is, whatever the FDA wants to call them, if medications are lawfully-produced under Good Manufacturing Practices, properly dispensed by a licensed professional and shipped by mail order, Americans are interested.
Oh, and these drugs are a hell of a lot cheaper.
Despite the clear advantages, these medications deemed to be misbranded or unapproved under U.S. law can be refused import by the FDA even if they are equally as safe and effective or the exact same as the medications sold in the U.S.
Here’s why… (more…)
Tagged with: adulterated, counterfeit, deflazacort, emflaza, FDA, marathon, misbranded, unapproved
by Lucia Mueller, President, PharmacyChecker.com | Nov 30, 2017 | Drug Safety
The verdict is in: blister packs may be a safer bet for packaging your medication. In the U.S. and sometimes in Canada, however, medications are dispensed as loose pills.
According to the FDA, over 1.3 million people are injured each year due to medication mistakes, which include dispensing errors in U.S. hospitals and pharmacies. As discussed in a blogpost by Roger Bate, an economist at the American Enterprise Institute, it may be safer to receive your medications in blister packs, whether dispensed locally or from an international pharmacy by mail, and the FDA seems to agree.
(more…)
Tagged with: Blister Packs, FDA, Roger Bate
by Gabriel Levitt, President, PharmacyChecker.com and Prescription Justice | Oct 5, 2017 | FDA
FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb, MD
This week, FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb said something revolutionary about the role of the FDA. For many years, the agency has maintained that its sole focus when it comes to regulating drugs is to ensure their safety and efficacy, but that drug prices are beyond its purview. In remarks pertaining to the FDA’s new initiative to speed up generic drug approvals of complex pharmaceuticals, Gottlieb stated that “if consumers are priced out of the drugs they need, that’s a public health concern that FDA should address.”
To those who support safe importation of lower-cost medications, that statement was the shot heard around the world. Indeed, drug prices are a public health concern. If we’re using logic, reason, and commonsense, it becomes untenable from a public policy and health perspective, grounded in basic medical ethics, to prohibit or even discourage importation of lawfully-manufactured medication by individuals who can’t afford it locally. (more…)
Tagged with: FDA, FDA Commissioner, Gottlieb
