Opinion: FDA is reduced to threatening U.S. drug consumers

Reading the pronouncements by William K. Hubbard, the Food and Drug Administration's associate commissioner for policy and planning, clouds the gray area of importing drugs from Canada even more than before.

It smells like the threat of prohibition of American drugs reimported from Canada. The fact is that prescription drugs produced by an American drug manufacturer at a cost of 2 cents a pill are being sold in this country for $2.50. The same drugs are being sold to Canada by the same manufacturer at a price low enough to enable Canada to export to the United States the same drug at a profit of $1.25. If this action is legal, it amounts to a mega-rip-off of the American consumer, especially the senior population of this country. Our seniors number 33-million, a figure that will double in the not-too-distant future.

While Congress plays politics with establishing a prescription drug program, some seniors have to make the hard decision of buying food or medications to sustain their lives. The FDA, which was created to protect the consumer, is being used by this administration to protect the drug industry's revenues of $192-billion.
-- Fred Stieber, Hometown Meds of Florida, Bayonet Point

Why not do what Canada does?

Re: Crackdown threatened on cheaper medicine.

I have an idea. Instead of spending time and taxpayer money cracking down on individuals who are helping seniors purchase medicine in Canada, why doesn't our government do what Canada does to control prices. Or are the people in our government afraid of losing all the "perks" they get from the pharmaceutical companies.
-- J.C. Quimby, Largo

Getting the shaft again

There is so much controversy regarding prescription drugs today. I may not be the brightest bulb in the chandelier, but I do not comprehend why people can buy drugs in Canada and Mexico at a fraction of the price. We in the United States get the same medication at two or three times the price. This makes me feel the people of our country are getting the shaft again.

I do not understand because these drugs are all manufactured in our country.
-- M. Johnson, Largo

For a fair phone rate system

Re: Watch your wallets: Tallahassee's on the line, March 12.

The main point in Howard Troxler's column is correct. There is not a working market for residential wired telephone customers in Florida. Because of decades of mandated below-cost basic rates supported by high access charges, the vigorous competition the business market enjoys has not reached the land-line residential market.

Contrast that to the wireless marketplace, where there is intense competition for both business and residential customers. This is due partially to technological differences, but it is also due to unsubsidized prices. Demand, price and innovation drive competition, not regulation.

We need to achieve the same kind of vibrant market on the wire-line side. The largest users of the wired telephone network are residential customers. It is impossible to create a fully functioning market without dealing with the subsidies that operated in the old regulatory world.

That is the "rebalancing" the telephone industry needs to accomplish -- take the old access subsidies and incorporate them into the basic service prices those subsidies have always supported. As a result, each service will bear its own costs and that will light a fire under the competitors who now play only in the business market.

No one is interested in "sticking it to residential customers." If a legislative bill were filed, the only intention would be to create a pricing system that is fair to everyone, an economy that encourages investment and jobs and a market that is driven by consumer choice, not by uneven subsidies.
-- Alan F. Ciamporcero, president, Southeast region, Verizon

Budget cuts will hurt

Re: Jeb Bush's budget.

I don't know all of the programs that Jeb has proposed cutting under the "no new taxes" banner. But I know a little about two: shellfish monitoring and urban fishing, two of the programs our governor deems expendable. I know these programs touch most of the people who live in Florida, and in the case of seafood, anyone in the country who eats an occasional oyster. (Florida's oysters help fill some of the void left by the calamity that is the oyster industry in Chesapeake Bay.)

What I also know is there's a common theme. Neither poor kids who live in cities or commercial fisherman have much clout. But rest assured, if we lose these programs, Florida will be a little bit less of what our bread and butter, tourists, come here for.
-- Steve Geiger, St. Petersburg

Victims of racial inequality

Re: It is their own fault, letter March 17.

The letter writer is responding to an article, Consultant says race holds black students back. Blacks are "trying to extract money from the trough," he says, are promoted less, and are less disciplined. They don't get along with their peers, have poor scores, don't get promoted, do get disciplined. Of course, it is "their own fault, not the school's."

"It is their own fault" for being on the short end of segregation, American racism, and the racial income gap.

Some of us "American citizen taxpayers" get really tired of the falsity of these excuses. The letter writer ought to know that a white St. Petersburg mayor during the Depression set up an 11-sided district "for the segregation of colored people" so black "American citizen taxpayers" would have less than half the median household income compared to whites.

This set up a "cheap labor supply," with lower income, lower incentives and morale, less health care, weak self-esteem, fathers less able to support families proudly, and on and on. What institution -- schools, religion, government, etc. -- was not involved in setting up this racial inequality? A legalized rip-off?
-- Lawrence F. Ellery, St. Petersburg

Offensive cartoon

Pat Oliphant's March 16 cartoon was very offensive. How disrespectful to make fun of anyone who prays to Almighty God. And to use his name in vain is a gross insult. As Exodus 20:7 tells us, he will not hold him guiltless who misuses his name.

Contrary to the message the cartoonist conveys, God can figure out the Iraq situation. He knows the beginning and end.

President Bush is not perfect; no one is. We are told in Holy Writ to pray for our leaders. If we did so, perhaps we would find less time to speak so negatively.
-- Keron N. Tomlinson, Dade City

Free to complain

No doubt you'll get letters from people complaining about the March 16 Pat Oliphant editorial cartoon on the President's bedtime discussion with God. But to me, that's what makes our country great.

They are as free to complain as Oliphant is to brilliantly skewer our president. There aren't many places on the planet that have that liberal freedom of speech thing.
-- Jim Lyman, Lutz

Paper is too divisive

At a time when our country should be united in our common cause, the war against terrorism, your newspaper takes the path of divisiveness.

Your article, Not Iraq, but Anniston, Ala., is just one of many in your paper that illustrate this point. The headline alone seeks to vilify our country and cast the United States in an unfavorable light, while taking the heat off a country that hates us, despises us, and would like nothing more than to see all we hold dear destroyed.

We believe in healthy debate, but your newspaper is far too one-sided in its reporting and editorial content. In our opinion, this type of unbalanced journalism is unprofessional and irresponsible, and we will have none of it.

We are convinced that if the United Nations, and all of our own citizens, would show resolve of purpose through strength, not a single shot would have been be fired in Iraq. That government would have collapsed, and a peaceful resolution would become possible.

Most everyone desires peace, but the St. Petersburg Times' misguided and divisive approach to journalism hampers the cause for peace.

Our intent is to cancel our subscription, and we will only consider renewing when the Times demonstrates a more balanced approach to journalism.
-- Michael and Mary Cooley, Tarpon Springs

Don't glorify the hunter

Re: Bounty's hunter, March 20.

Did you really have to publish an article about a man who says that he ". . . has a craving to kill"? In these days of man's inhumanity to man, was it necessary to glorify a human who finds nothing wrong with devoting his life to killing animals and who is upset when other activities have to get in the way of his killing sprees?

Surely, editors, you could have devoted large amounts of newspaper space to people who are doing wonderful things to peacefully help the world rather than to someone who gets into depressed moods when he hasn't killed a deer in a while
-- Barbara Pafundi, Palm Harbor

Bless these special caregivers

I would feel negligent not responding to A gown for Lindsay Rose: an update (March 12). Like Mary and Steve Spittka, my husband and I lost our daughter, Jill, on Jan. 3. She, too, was stillborn after a seemingly healthy and uneventful pregnancy.

Along with the ongoing great support of family and friends, the initial support by the staff at Morton Plant Hospital in Clearwater, led by a nursing angel named Gwyneth Everington, who helped (and continues to help) us live with this tragedy. Gwyneth made the initial calls and arranged a meeting with the funeral home and cemetery to try to spare us some pain. They informed us of some very helpful support networks. Gwyneth and her staff also dressed our daughter in a hand-made gown, took photographs, foot and hand prints and blessed our precious baby. If not for them, I would have none of these treasured memories that continue to comfort me, except the ones in my mind.

God bless all these very special caregivers who cannot possibly realize the importance of their work to grieving parents and their families. My heart aches for Mary and Steve and all the other parents who suffer the indescribable pain of the loss of a baby.
-- Sue Scholpp, Clearwater

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