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FRIDAY, June 18 (HealthDayNews) -- Critics of the Bush administration's move to halt online prescription drug sales from Canadian pharmacies say a new U.S. government probe undermines the argument that drugs bought in Canada are unsafe.
The General Accounting Office (GAO) report "shows that Canadian pharmacies are a safe source of high-quality prescription drugs, and we all know that those drugs are cheaper. This report means there are no more excuses for inaction," Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) told HealthDay Friday.
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"It's high time for the congressional leaders and President Bush to pass our bipartisan drug importation bill, to allow all American consumers to order cheaper prescription drugs from Canadian pharmacies," he added.
Kennedy, along with Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), helped sponsor a bipartisan bill to legalize the importation of cheap prescription drugs from Canada and other countries.
The probe by the GAO, the investigative arm of Congress, found a multiplicity of problems, including drugs that weren't what they were supposed to be. But Canadian pharmacies were far from the worst offenders, according to its report, which was issued Thursday.
And the FDA did not dispute the findings, the report added.
All 18 Canadian pharmacies contacted required prescriptions before selling drugs, compared to only five of 29 in the United States that did so. The remaining American pharmacies and all 21 other foreign pharmacies contacted sold drugs without a prescription from a doctor.
"The biggest issue for Canadian pharmacies we found was that 16 of 18 samples were not approved for U.S. markets, either because of variations in labeling or facilities that were not FDA-inspected, so it was a drug intended for a foreign market," said Marcia Crosse, co-author of a new report on the subject and director of health care at the GAO. "But for all 16 of those samples, the manufacturer attested that they were chemically comparable."
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