Thursday, August 12, 2004

Good Lord, they're shameless:

FDA: Imported Drugs Could Be Terror Target

Tampering with prescription drugs could be a way for terrorists to launch an attack on Americans, acting Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Lester M. Crawford said.

Crawford said possible action by terrorists was the most serious of his concerns about the increasing efforts of states and cities to import drugs from Canada to save money.

Would-be terrorists need only poke around the Internet to learn how, two decades ago, Tylenol, then the nation's leading painkiller, was removed from shelves, filled with cyanide and returned to stores to kill unsuspecting consumers.

A spokesman for the Homeland Security Department said it has received "no specific information" of such a threat.


--Washington Post

So listen up, Grandma: No more Canadian drugs. Either you're with Big Pharma or you're with the terrorists.

Excuse me, but how would learning about the contamination of drugs that had been removed from store shelves help terrorists put toxins in drugs that are sent through the mail?

Now, of course, the feds could legalize the importation of prescription drugs from Canada and other countries with high safety standards; there could be government oversight of the imports, and maybe we wouldn't have to cower in fear at the prospect of weaponized Lipitor. But until that happens we have the feds making high-profile seizures of prescription drugs shipped by Canadians. (Go here and here to learn about what the Minnesota Senior Federation, which imported the seized drugs, has to go through to get reasonably priced medicines to its members.)

(Post link via Seeing the Forest.)

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