Byron Dorgan: “First of all, the only way they can be reimported into the United States would be if a licensed pharmacist or a licensed…”

“First of all, the only way they can be reimported into the United States would be if a licensed pharmacist or a licensed distributor in the United States purchases them from a licensed pharmacist or distributor in Canada. So at that point, they have entered the stream of prescription drugs in the Canadian system. At that point, the Canadians say: We assure the safety of the chain of custody of those prescription drugs just as you do in the United States. I find this debate interesting because I was up on the border of Canada one day. This was before mad cow disease occurred in Canada. My heart goes out to the Canadian ranchers for having discovered one instance of mad cow disease. Do you know what we do with Canada with respect to meat. We say: We have reciprocal inspection procedures for meat. You inspect it and that is good enough for us. What we want you to do is cut one little strip off the meat and lay it in the back of the truck, and we will open the back of the truck and see if it looks decent and smells all right, and then you just run the truck through. Why? Because we have reciprocal inspections. We say: If it is good enough for you, it is good enough for us. We have identical chains of custody for prescription drugs in Canada and the U.S., but we won't say: If it is good enough for Canada with an identical chain of custody for prescription drugs, it is good enough for us. That doesn't make sense to me. There is only one reason we won't say that.…”