Online Pharmacy Bill Draws Conyers’ Ire at Judiciary Hearing

The National Association of Boards of Pharmacy’s voluntary compliance program for Internet pharmacies won’t stop people from getting powerful drugs without a meaningful prescription, Scott said. The National Survey on Drug Use and Health in 2006 said 7 million in the U.S. abuse prescription drugs, the vast majority of those pain relievers that can be purchased easily online, he said. An online questionnaire often is all that separates a customer from purchasing drugs, with no in-person doctor examination necessary to get a prescription, said committee Ranking Member Lamar Smith, R-Texas.

The Ryan Haight Online Pharmacy Consumer Protection Act, S-980, would require Drug Enforcement Administration registration and prohibit the sale of controlled substances without a “valid prescription,” which requires at least one in-person consultation with a doctor. It would also make a new crime of illicit distribution over the Internet and up penalties for some controlled-substance violations. It passed the Senate unanimously in April and has been referred to both House Judiciary and Commerce committees. A House companion is expected “shortly,” Scott said.

The “vast majority” of online pharmacies are “linked” with pharmacies and doctors registered with the DEA, said Joseph Rannazzisi, deputy assistant administrator of the Office of Diversion Control. But the DEA identified 34 rogue online pharmacies in 2006 that shipped 98 million dosage units of hydrocodone, used to make Vicodin, an absurdly large figure compared with brick-and-mortar sales, he said. “As of today there is no law we can rely on” to shut down illicit Internet pharmacies, said Christine Jones, general counsel for domain registrar and Web hosting company GoDaddy.com. GoDaddy’s registered domains will cross 30 million Wednesday, so it can’t police them all, Jones said. The company has shut down 6,000 illicit pharmacies already this year, compared with 1,300 in 2007, she added. The last two prosecutions in Ohio concerned small Internet pharmacies which supplied 1.2 million dosage units of hydrocodone in just 4 months, said William Winsley, executive director of the Ohio State Board of Pharmacy.

But there’s no “empirical research” showing that online buyers largely abuse their prescriptions, said attorney Patrick Egan, who defended an Internet pharmacy in court. Rural and poorer users will suffer the most from passage of new restrictions, as they can’t necessarily visit doctors in person for prescriptions, and they will be driven to offshore Internet pharmacies “where we have no control” over product quality, Egan said. It’s better to require pharmacies to use computer programs that, for example, check the frequency of prescription requests from a given street address to ensure that drugs aren’t being abused, he said.

‘Mandatory Penalties All Over the Place’

Conyers had unusually harsh words for the Senate bill. “I thought this was going to be a very simple hearing here, and then I find out… we got mandatory penalties all over the place” in S-980, he said. The bill in particular would double the prison time for distributing certain drugs that result in death or serious bodily harm, to 20 years. “What possible salutary effect can it have and what kind of deterrent do you think it’s going to have” to stiffen prison time, Conyers asked rhetorically. He said he would talk to Reps. Bart Stupak, D-Mich., and Mary Bono, R-Calif. -- presumably the sponsors of the latent House companion -- about doing a completely different bill. “I don’t want to be fooling around trying to amend this in the full committee,” he said.

The Senate bill only targets 1 percent of the drug problem, Conyers continued later. The U.S. spends $45 billion a year fighting a $65 billion industry, he said. “We're spending hundreds of billions of dollars locking up people” with mandatory sentences, he said, asking ex- prosecutor Jones to justify the bill’s approach. The law’s provision of a mandatory database for online pharmacies is what’s most needed, she said. S-980 only raises the “caps” for a few prison sentences, Rannazzisi said: “These are white-collar criminals.” Conyers sarcastically responded that white collar criminals would really be worried about higher minimum sentences.

Jones compared the Senate bill’s provisions to those in child-porn laws that have made it harder to purchase the illicit material by making it “per se illegal.” That’s not the case with prescriptions -- GoDaddy can’t go to an organization comparable to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children to shut down drug sites, she said. Even offshore sites would be harder for U.S. customers to reach, since they would be placed on a Justice Department blacklist of sites that aren’t registered with DEA, Jones said. In the absence of easy-to-buy child porn, pedophiles have resorted to “user-to-user access,” which bodes well for more regulations on Internet pharmacies, she said.

Scott harshly questioned Rannazzisi on whether he knew of any studies showing a racial bias in the application of mandatory minimum sentences. The Judicial Conference of the U.S. has said such sentences violate “common sense,” and a Rand Corp. study said they waste taxpayer money, Scott said. He asked Rannazzisi to find a justification from the Bush administration for leaving the higher penalties in the bill. Mandatory minimums will affect everyone in a drug operation, including “people off on a tangent,” giving authority to U.S. attorneys over judges, Scott said. Rannazzisi replied that the trigger for heightened prison time was death and bodily harm.

Conyers, who appeared irate, at one point referred to GoDaddy as both “Big Daddy” and “Little Daddy” for no apparent reason. Jones later told us she wasn’t sure what he meant: “It was a light moment for us during this morning’s testimony.” The company’s soon-to-be 30 million registered domains is an “industry record,” so that could explain Conyers’ odd statement, she said.