Political Quotes

“Mr. President, I am proud today to support the Drug Quality and Security Act because it marks an important step forward in protecting the safety and integrity of our Nation's drug supply. California has been a leader in addressing this issue and played a key role in creating a solution. Patients deserve peace of mind when it comes to purchasing drugs. When a parent walks into a pharmacy to pick up a prescription for a sick child, she should be confident that the drugs she is picking up are safe and have not been tampered with. What is perhaps not known to many people, however, is that in today's drug supply system, there is no standard process for oversight to trace drugs through the supply chain system and make sure they were in the right hands and properly stored the whole time. We hear occasionally about infected or counterfeit drugs. These are shocking stories. Last year, New England Compounding Center, or NECC, a compounding manufacturer from Framingham, MA, produced contaminated medicine that sickened over 750 people all across the country. I'm very sad to say that 64 people have died, needlessly, because of these contaminated drugs. A report by the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions, HELP, Committee from earlier this year found that NECC was known to produce drugs that were mislabeled, did not contain the correct dosage of active ingredients and were made using equipment that was not properly sterilized. You might think that a story like this is rare.…”