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July 22, 2003 Dear
Representative: The
National Grange urges you to vote NO on HR 2427, the Pharmaceutical Market Access
Act of 2003, when it is considered in the coming days in the House of Representatives.
If enacted, this bill will endanger patient safety by increasing the risk of counterfeit,
adulterated, contaminated or subpotent drugs entering our medicine chests. Furthermore
it will create an unnecessary risk to general public safety by allowing any persons,
including convicted rapists, pedophiles and sex offenders to freely import so
called "date rape" drugs without any accountability for their actions. The
National Grange is this nation's oldest general farm and rural public interest
organization. Founded in 1867, today the National Grange represents nearly 300,000
individual Grange members affiliated with nearly 3,000 local, county and state
Grange chapters across the United States. The National Grange has long been a
strong supporter of measures to assure access to modern pharmaceutical technologies
for rural families. We have strongly supported and applauded the bipartisan political
leadership demonstrated by the U.S. House of Representatives this year to provide
rural seniors a choice of Medicare programs that include an affordable prescription
drug benefit. However, we must express our strong opposition to HR 2427, because
we believe it will effectively deregulate the retail pharmaceutical distribution
market in the United States, thereby placing legitimate pharmaceutical consumers
at risk of fraud and unsuspecting victims at risk of horrible sexual exploitation.
The United States has a closed and highly regulated prescription drug supply system
that is second to none. As a result, Americans rightly believe that their medicines
are safe, effective and most importantly, will cause no harm. HR 2427 would disrupt
this system by allowing for the introduction of prescription drugs that may have
been manufactured or stored in a country with significantly lesser standards.
HR 2427 supposedly
limits reimportation to a list of twenty-five countries. However the legislation
contains no safeguards to assurance that the drugs imported from one of the twenty
five "approved" countries did not originate somewhere else --- perhaps Thailand,
Belize or the Sudan. In fact, HR 2427 eliminates the current safeguards on drug
importation that require importers to provide "documentation from the foreign
seller specifying the original source of the product." HR
2427 would, among other things, allow individuals to reimport drugs with no limitations
on the type or quantity. These drugs will not have to be tested for authenticity
or degradation. Clearly, patients who ultimately take these drugs are putting
themselves at risk --- and they most likely will not even know it. Furthermore,
they run the risk of ending up back in our health care system sicker and in greater
need of care, at greater costs. If the intent of this legislation is to lower
costs, the reality is that it could ultimately do just the opposite. Most
shockingly, individuals will be exempted from maintaining any records or reporting
to the Department of Health and Human Services any information about the drugs
they are bringing into this country, whether they are intended for personal or
commercial use. With no mechanism to track individual drug importers and no mechanism
to track the individual drugs being imported, this will create a massive loophole
that known, as well as currently undiscovered, sexual predators can exploit. Drugs
as Rohypnol, GHB, and Ketamine will become widely available to anyone who wants
them for the purpose of procuring sex without someone's consent. Especially vulnerable
to this type of sexual exploitation will be children. The
National Grange understands the pressures that you confront as you work to improve
your constituents' access to pharmaceuticals. However, HR 2427 is not about free
trade or open markets. It is about radical and ill-conceived deregulation of the
retail pharmaceutical distribution system in the United States. It would roll
back decades of protections afforded to American consumers of prescription medications
to assure that these products are safe and effective. It would remove almost any
accountability for the sale of counterfeit, adulterated, contaminated or subpotent
pharmaceuticals in the United States, so long as they were purchased overseas.
Of greatest concern to the National Grange is the fact that this legislation would
create a huge public safety problem by opening a loophole that would freely allow
pedophiles and sex offenders access to dangerous and powerful pharmaceutical products
that could be used to criminally and horribly exploit children and other victims.
For these reasons, the National Grange urges you to oppose HR 2427, the Pharmaceutical
Market Access Act of 2003, when it is considered in the coming days in the House
of Representatives. Sincerely,
Leroy Watson,
Legislative Director
National Grange of the Order of Patrons of Husbandry
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