By Matt Sepic, KWMU
St. Louis – Missouri pharmacists say imported prescription drugs are unsafe, and people who obtain them through state government are giving up their rights.
Yesterday Missouri Governor Bob Holden announced the state's participation in I-Save-RX.
The program offers discounts of 25 to 50 percent off U.S. prices for about 100 different medications.
But Missouri Pharmacy Association President Randy Meents says the safety of Canadian and British drugs cannot be guaranteed.
"You might ask, where are the dead bodies?" Meents said. "Where is the harm to patients? Before the FDA laws were enacted in 1937, there were dead bodies, there was patient harm. That was the purpose of the enactions of the federal drug laws."
Meents could not point to any instance of death as a result of imported drugs.
But he says I-Save-RX participants in Missouri have no legal recourse if their prescriptions are defective.