Huckabee backs the ‘freedom to purchase safe drugs from Canada’

Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, a Republican presidential candidate, says the United States should allow prescription drugs to be imported from Canada.

“One free and fair trade proposal that would actually help Americans by saving them billions isn’t even on the table: prescription drug re-importation,” Huckabee wrote in an op-ed for the Orlando Sentinel published Wednesday. 

{mosads}”Americans should have the freedom to purchase safe drugs from Canada,” Huckabee wrote. “It just makes sense.”

Lawmakers have pushed for years to allow imported prescription drugs from Canada, but the efforts have so far failed to gain traction amid strong opposition from pharmaceutical companies. Drugs cannot be purchased from another country unless they cannot be found in the United States.

Reimportation, something supported by President Obama before he won the White House, was not included in major healthcare legislation passed in 2003 and in the Affordable Care Act in 2010.

“Some say that re-importing American-made prescription drugs from Canada is unsafe,” Huckabee wrote in his op-ed.

“But if the United States can put a man on the moon and map the human genome, I’m confident we can figure out a way to safely send pills from Montreal to Miami or Toronto to Tampa Bay. Canadians have strict safety standards, and we can make this work,” he added. 

Huckabee praised the efforts of Republican Sens. Chuck Grassley (Iowa), John McCain (Ariz.) and Jeff Flake (Ariz.) to push for drug reimportation. 

In November, McCain and Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) renewed their push for a bill paving the way for drugs to be imported from Canada. 

The Congressional Budget Office estimated in 2009 that drug reimportation would save the federal government $19 billion over a decade, which Huckabee cited in his call for cheaper drugs.