Drug import crackdown shows hazards

Congress is unlikely to legalize the reimportation of prescriptions drugs, but that isn't stemming the tide of medications from unknown origins.

By Joel B. Finkelstein, AMNews staff. Oct. 25, 2004.

Washington -- The federal government's aggressive targeting of drug shipments from outside the country has turned up what could be a dangerous emerging trend: reimportation from "mystery" countries.

For example, officials recently confiscated a shipment of more than 400 prescriptions bought from a Canadian mail-order pharmacy. The drugs were actually shipped from the Bahamas, and came from places such as Singapore and Pakistan, said Tom McGinnis, the Food and Drug Administration's director of pharmacy affairs.

When contacted by the FDA, the people who purchased the drugs couldn't believe the medications were coming from the Bahamas, he said.

The FDA hadn't tested the content of the drugs, but "I wouldn't take some of these," McGinnis said. As the practice of reimportation grows, so will the number of drugs coming from mystery countries -- nations other than the one the consumer ordered from, he predicted.

As part of an information campaign to discourage reimportation, the FDA released a price comparison chart showing that generic versions of many of the drugs purchased in that shipment were actually available at lower prices from U.S. pharmacies.

Although still illegal, reimportation is becoming a boom industry as more and more seniors take advantage of the promise of bargain medications available from Canada, Mexico and beyond. Warnings from drug companies, doctor groups and federal regulators over safety concerns have so far largely fallen on deaf ears.