WASHINGTON – The Senate moved Tuesday toward opening the way for Americans to import prescription drugs from Canada, seeking to ease a ban on cheaper medicine crossing the border.
The proposal, which was approved 68-32, would create a Canadian loophole in a Food and Drug Administration ban on importing prescription medicine into the United States. It was offered as part of a $31.7 billion Homeland Security Department spending blueprint for the fiscal year that begins Oct. 1.
Washington’s Democratic Sens. Maria Cantwell and Patty Murray voted with the majority in favor of the proposal.
Homeland Security’s Customs and Border Protection bureau began aggressively seizing Tamiflu, Viagra and other incoming medications at borders in November. Prescription drugs – even those manufactured in the United States – are generally sold at cheaper prices in Canada.
“We should demand that (Customs and Border Protection) focus on the true priority that we face on the war on terror,” said Sen. David Vitter, R-La., of efforts to secure U.S. borders. “Stripping small amounts of prescription drugs from the hands of seniors … . that should not be a priority.”
Vitter’s plan, which was embraced by Democrats, specifically would prohibit Customs and Border Protection from stopping people with doctors’ prescriptions for FDA-approved drugs from bringing the medicine into this country from Canada.
But Republican leaders vociferously opposed the plan for fear, they said, the drugs could be unsafe for consumers – or even present a terror risk.
“If I were a creative terrorist, I would say to myself, ‘Hey, listen, all I’ve got to do is produce a can here that says ‘Lipitor’ on it, make it look like the original Lipitor bottle, which isn’t too hard to do, fill it with anthrax,” said Sen. Judd Gregg, R-N.H.
Lipitor is a cholesterol-lowering drug.
Aides said the drug import plan was likely to be stripped out of the legislation – as it has been in past years – whenever it got to a conference of House and Senate lawmakers who will negotiate the final version.
Two House spending bills this year – to fund the Homeland Security and Agriculture departments in 2007 – include the drug importation plan, said Kirstin Brost, spokeswoman for U.S. Rep. David Obey of Wisconsin, the top Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee.
The Bush administration has opposed efforts to loosen the restrictions.
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