by Gabriel Levitt, President, PharmacyChecker.com and Prescription Justice | Feb 5, 2016 | Controlled Drugs, Online Pharmacies
The prescription narcotic epidemic in America is banging on our national consciousness, almost as loudly as the issue of skyrocketing drug prices. The pharmaceutical industry and its front groups have tried in the past to conflate safe international online pharmacies with the illegal and dangerous online sale of controlled drugs, including prescription narcotics, and I’ve called them out over the years. Safe international online pharmacies do not sell prescription narcotics at all. But, unlike safe international online pharmacies, which sell non controlled medications at much lower prices, is Big Pharma pushing narcotics and fueling drug addiction in America? Apparently, yes.
As reported in The Fix, a documentary film called “Prescription Thugs” explores the connection between the pharmaceutical industry, the power it wields in Congress, and the painkiller addiction epidemic. It is the story of people who were introduced to painkillers when their doctors prescribed them, only to find themselves addicted. For years, the industry was making a certain formulation of the popular prescription opiate OxyContin that was easily abused by addicts and therefore driving astronomical sales. When a new form of the drug made it harder to crush and therefore inject intravenously, its sales tanked by 80%. You can view the film’s trailer at http://www.prescriptionthugs.com/.
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Tagged with: Alliance for Safe Online Pharmacies, Big Pharma, controlled drugs, Partnership for Safe Medicines, Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration
by Gabriel Levitt, President, PharmacyChecker.com and Prescription Justice | Dec 31, 2015 | Drug Importation, Drug Prices, Online Pharmacies, Skipping medications
As we move out of 2015 and into 2016 with a strong wave of hostility rising throughout the country about high drug prices, what I’m about to report may seem incongruous. Fewer Americans seem to be buying lower cost medications from other countries. For the past few years, largely based on data from the CDC in 2013, I’ve published the number five million as the approximate number of Americans who, due to high drug prices, import medication annually for personal use. But a newer CDC report published in 2015 (that I recently came across) puts that number closer to four million, a 20% decrease.
If drug prices are going up, and Americans are fed up with prescription costs, wouldn’t you expect more people to be buying lower cost medications from outside the country? With fewer Americans buying medication internationally, potentially one million, how many of them are simply not taking prescribed medication? Are our most trusted authorities scaring Americans away from obtaining lower cost medications from other countries, or has affordable access improved over the past few years?
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Tagged with: Alliance for Safe Online Pharmacies, CDC, Center for Safe Internet Pharmacies, Drug Importation, Drug Prices, FDA, National Association of Boards of Pharmacy, Online Pharmacies, Partnership for Safe Medicines, Patent Cliff, Seroquel, United States
by Gabriel Levitt, President, PharmacyChecker.com and Prescription Justice | Oct 9, 2014 | FDA, Online Pharmacies, Pharmaceutical Industry
Drug Companies Front and Center at PSM Interchange Conference
Two weeks ago I brought you some highlights of the PhRMA-led Partnership for Safe Medicines (PSM) Interchange propaganda show, which was held on September 18th. Look over to the left. See that picture. Those logos of big pharmaceutical companies make it abundantly clear who is pushing the distorted message of PSM about personal drug importation and online pharmacies.
I’m not joking about the word “propaganda” applied to the PSM event. The online Merriam Webster dictionary provides the following definition for that word: “ideas or statements that are often false or exaggerated and that are spread in order to help a cause, a political leader, a government, etc.” In this case, as I see it, the “cause” of PSM is the commercial agenda of the pharmaceutical and U.S. pharmacy industries cynically couched behind terms of patient safety. A central message of PSM is that Americans are risking their lives buying medication online from other countries and that there is no way to do so safely. Those are false and exaggerated messages that are potentially leading lawmakers and regulators to overreact and scare Americans from a potential lifeline of affordable prescription drugs. Evidence shows that this has been PhRMA’s communications strategy for more than a decade. (more…)
Tagged with: Counterfeit Drugs, daniel burke, FDA, Interchnage, laganga, Mississippi AG hood, OCI, Partnership for Safe Medicines, phrma, PSM
