MPs Pass Prescription Drug Legislation

July 23, 2011

prescription drug bottle generic 2Last night [July 22] MPs approved legislation which will enable prescription drugs to be imported from anywhere in the world, as long as they meet the regulatory standards and are approved for sale in the US, Canada or the EU.

Previously drugs could only be imported from a list of designated countries, which included Australia, Brazil, Canada, India, Israel, Russia, Switzerland, United States and member states of the European Union.

India, Israel and Brazil were added to the list last month, a move which prompted Shadow Health Minister Dr Kathy Michelmore to say, “The pharmaceutical community has had some concerns that standards and controls from these countries cannot be guaranteed.”

“While we support the need to expand accessibility to generic costs, as that’s an important way to control costs in a health care system, its also incredibly important to ensure the generic drugs that we import are definitely genuine and are not counterfeit.”

The legislation approved last night moved the system away a designated countries list, to allowing prescription drugs from any country in the world – as they as they are approved and in use in the US, Canada or the European Union.

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Comments (6)

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  1. not acceptable says:

    and what is the regulatory standard? Because many focus has been on the fact that these drugs could be coming from countries who approve the drug in there country but are not up to FDA standards. So Im very concern that the flood gates for generic drugs that cause more than just a head ache, to causes up to severe liver damage, contamination, and susitution of a particular make up of a drug within the drug and the list goes on. You will be surprise how many generic drugs have been banned in the UK, which some of this has been based on, have been now banned because they led to cancer and nicrosis on the tissue. But if your trying to lower the health bill by doing this…i see it as a quicker option to kill you faster.

    • Really amused says:

      As long as the drugs from any country is approved by USFDA/UKMHRA/EU, how can we have a problem with it? It has gone through the stringent standards already, including the composition of the drug called bioequivalence. So where is the fear? If the drug is currently on sale in stores like Rite-Aid in US and that is now brought into BDA, what complaint can we have? If a particular drug is banned in US or EU or UK, the importer from BDA will definitely not import that drug anyway.

  2. cynical says:

    Regardless of the legitimacy of these generic drugs the real issue will be the even larger profit margin they will provide for the importers while still being cheaper than the brand names.

    A ‘saving’ over what we used to pay won’t be anywhere as sweet if we knew that the new product was costing the importer 80% less than the name brand one but we were only paying 15-20% less over the counter on the original prescription.

    Cynical ? Only a little .. sigh

  3. Black Soil says:

    MP’s need to pass legislation to ensure they get tested for taking illegal drugs. We cannot have drug addicts sitting in parliament or the senate.

    • au naturell says:

      ‘course , that doesn’t include herb too .. right ? hahaha

  4. Shut Yo Mouth... says:

    Now believe it or not , The MP,s are falling over themselves to pass legislation to ensure that their Insurance Plan will only cover Generic drugs . I love my lawmakers …