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Apr. 20--The chief of the Food and Drug Administration during the Clinton Administration, David Kessler, urged Senate passage of a bill yesterday that would allow US consumers to import prescription drugs from Canada and Europe.
Kessler said he supports a measure sponsored by Democratic Senator Byron Dorgan of North Dakota and Republican Senator Olympia Snowe of Maine that would require the FDA to establish regulated importation channels using a system of foreign suppliers that have passed FDA inspections.
He said the bill would introduce safety to a black market in foreign pills that he called "out of control."
"We already have a system of importation of drugs that jeopardizes public health," Kessler said in prepared testimony. "Congress has the responsibility to fix this serious problem."
The Senate committee that oversees healthcare legislation held a hearing yesterday on Dorgan's bill, which is one of several in Congress that would allow Americans to buy their drugs from foreign countries where government price controls create deep discounts.
Kessler pointed out that Americans looking for relief from high US prices are increasingly taking the issue into their own hands. They illegally imported about $1.4 billion of drugs last year, mostly from Canada but also from Europe and elsewhere, according to a US Department of Health and Human Services report in December.
Kessler, who led the FDA from 1990 to 1997, was known as an especially active leader. As the former chief of drug safety in the United States, his testimony puts added pressure on the administration, which has argued that imports cannot be made safe without enormous costs.
The FDA did not respond to a request for comment yesterday.
Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist of Tennessee blocked proponents from taking the Dorgan-Snowe measure to the Senate floor for a vote last year, but supporters are keeping the pressure on. A spokesman for Republican Senator Mike Enzi of Wyoming, chairman of the Senate committee for health and education, said yesterday that Enzi wants to work toward a compromise.
"He's convinced that drug importation is going to occur in some fashion, and his view is that we have to come up with a middle ground that provides safety for consumers," said spokesman Craig Orfield.
Enzi opposes a key provision in the Dorgan legislation that would stop drug manufacturers from curbing supplies to countries that ship low-cost prescriptions to Americans. Keeping that provision out of a compromise would allow drug manufacturers to keep their hand on the valve, which has been a key tactic in their effort to control the flow of low-cost imports.
The industry argues that authorizing imports would only add to the flood of counterfeit drugs across US borders. It also says the relatively high domestic drug prices support development of new drugs.
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