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HoustonChronicle.com - Bill would let Texans import medications

Reading stuff like this is the type of thing that makes me a little prouder than normal of my own State Rep . There's a right way and a wrong way to go about doing drug reimportation, and this one seems to hit all the right notes.

The concern is that what gets re-imported will not meet the usual FDA requirements that drugs must meet in the American market. Hochberg's bill has a fix for that problem:

Hochberg's bill would allow the state to license pharmacies approved by the Canadian government so they can ship prescription drugs to Texans. A Texas resident would be limited to purchasing no more than a three-month supply of any one drug at one time.

So what do conservatives think of a bill that Rick Perry is heretofore open to, the AMA endorses in principle and other states have operated with little known hitches?

This is an utterly rotten idea. Drug reimportation from Canada is nothing more than "price controls" by another name (and we all know that price controls are economically destructive)

- Owen Courreges - LoneStarTimes

Owen goes on to encourage an all-out trade war as solving the problem of price differences. A rather distant plank to walk in order to win applause form the phramaceutical industry, it seems. Such a response, given the type of bill we're dealing with, means an abdication of conservative principles. This is about competition, though. And irony of ironies, the very ideologues who have seemingly been supportive of increasing globalization abroad now fear its encroachment on our shores. Let the other side defend protectionist trade policies for the drug industry.