Word: canadians
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...main battlefront over the Canadian conduit has been in Congress, where the drug industry has developed a close working relationship with powerful legislators to hold the line against cheap foreign imports. Just before Congress passed the $400 billion Medicare bill providing prescription drug coverage to seniors in November, friendly lawmakers deleted from the legislation a provision that would have legalized the importation of Canadian drugs with appropriate safeguards...
...doing so, mainly because of drug-industry lobbying and political resistance to anything like price controls, but rifts have begun to develop. State and local governments from New Hampshire to California, tired of waiting for the border to open, have started considering ways to skirt federal laws to get Canadian drugs to their citizens...
...amendment sanctioning sales to U.S. pharmacies was sponsored by Representative Gil Gutknecht, a Minnesota Republican, and approved in July by a vote of 243 to 186. Notably, Gutknecht's language provided ample protection for consumers--long the argument cited by the FDA and the pharmaceutical industry for prohibiting Canadian drug purchases. The provision authorized U.S. pharmacies to import prescription drugs made in Canada and other industrialized countries as long as manufacturers used counterfeit-resistant technologies and the drugs were approved...
Pfizer Inc., the world's largest pharmaceutical company, wants to shut down the Canadian pipeline used by the likes of Helen Clark and her fellow border crossers. Pfizer is aggressively seeking a pharmaceutical blacklist, warning Canadian pharmacies that if they sell drugs to Americans, Pfizer will halt supplies of all its products. The company ordered Canadian wholesale distributors to prepare reports itemizing past and present sales of its products by individual drugstores. Pfizer declined to comment to TIME. Four other companies--AstraZeneca, GlaxoSmithKline, Eli Lilly and Wyeth--have taken steps to reduce Canadian sales...
Influential lawmakers have given unqualified support to the FDA's anti-Canadian stance, among them Orrin Hatch, a Republican Senator from Utah. Says Hatch: "Many of my constituents have written, asking why they cannot use the lower-cost medications from Canada. The answer is easy: it is just irresponsible for Congress to jeopardize public safety by allowing the unchecked reimportation of drugs ... If we truly care about our seniors and other patients who depend upon prescription drugs, we should not expose them to what amounts to pharmaceutical Russian roulette...