On the recordJune 3, 2013
I thank the gentleman for yielding, and I thank Mr. Latta for his work on this issue as well. This bill before us today is a product of several years of collaboration. It's a really complicated issue, and it's important that you have a lot of collaboration to address something of this complexity. This legislation that Mr. Latta and I have introduced together will provide what I think are important steps for the security of our prescription drug supply chain from counterfeiters and other bad actors. We've seen in recent press reports about fake drugs slipping into the supply chain, so the threat of counterfeit drugs is a growing problem in this country. In fact, when you think about it, the counterfeit drug trade may be a more lucrative opportunity than the illegal drug trade, since the United States, overall, spends roughly $325 billion a year on prescription drugs. This bill is an effort to try to keep those bad actors from entering the drug supply. Since we've had some of these problems, some States have, rightly, tried to take action to deal with this. What this legislation is going to do, however, is establish more of a national standard to create some certainty for everyone in the supply chain so there's an opportunity to work effectively in a national way. Without such action, everyone in the supply chain could be forced to comply with a never-ending patchwork of different and complex State laws.…
