Today, Kerry is calling for legalization of drug reimportation from Canada and other countries. And the FDA
is announcing that reimportation presents a terrorist threat, a threat that is so serious that it's their biggest concern about drug reimportation.
This is ridiculous. It's a classic example of the Bush administration using the legitimate fear of terrorism to support an unrelated political end.
Quite simply, the FDA is not blocking reimportation because they are afraid of Al Quaeda. That's a lie. First off, this fear is entirely theoretical--the FDA has never demonstrated that anyone has ever been harmed by reimported drugs. Second, the FDA doesn't take such drastic measures even when there IS a history of people suffering harm from terrorist attacks to the food and drug supply.
For example, in 1982, seven people were murdered by cyanide in Tylenol bottles, and since that time people have tampered with drugs in spite of improved packaging. And in 1984, a bunch of cultists in Oregon spiked salad bars with salmonella because they wanted to depress voter turnout in an upcoming election. Have we made it illegal to leave drugs out on shelves where people can tamper with them? Have we banned salad bars?
Furthermore, the international food supply is far more inherently insecure than the drug supply. To state the obvious, drugs are produced in factories which can be inspected and secured. Food is grown outdoors on farms, often in remote areas. Call me crazy, but I think it's a lot easier for an Al Quaeda operative to poison dates as they're drying in a Pakistani farmer's back yard than it is for him to infiltrate a Canadian factory. Yet I've never heard the FDA warn that we may have to stop importing food because of the terrorist threat it presents.
This is another example of the Bush administration using the fear of terrorism to achieve their political goals. Because drug companies don't want reimportation, reimportation is a new terrorist threat, a threat so extreme that the only way to confront it is to ban reimportation.
What's most shocking here is that there is no such thing as a link too tendentious. That this administration is still willing use terror threats to support their political ends is terrifying. Is it any surprise that we have become so cynical about terror alerts?