Judd Gregg -- Pharma's loyal soldier

Today, the Senate passed a proposal that would make it easier for folks to bring small amounts of prescription drugs into the US from Canada. US Customs officials had been seizing some of these drugs since 2004, but they recently became more aggressive in preventing any of the cheaper Canadian drugs from being brought into the US. While this proposal still has an uphill battle before it becomes law, this was an encouraging development.

One of the representatives arguing most vehemently against this proposal was Sen. Judd Gregg (R-N.H.). According to the article:

Sen. Judd Gregg, R-N.H., said the proposal was an attempt to push the FDA into reversing itself while "creating a massive hole on our capacity to secure our borders and protect ourselves."

"If I were a creative terrorist, I would say to myself, 'Hey, listen, all I've got to do is produce a can here that says 'Lipitor' on it, make it look like the original Lipitor bottle, which isn't too hard to do, fill it with anthrax," Gregg said.

Lipitor is a cholesterol-lowering drug.

I began to wonder why Sen. Gregg would be so anxious to keep these senior citizen outlaws from smuggling a 30 or 60 day supply of heart pills or cholesterol pills into the country. Was it really because of a fear of terrorists infiltrating pill bottles in Canada? On a lark, I checked out the list of contributors to Sen. Gregg's campaign funds. Sure enough, "Pharmaceutical/Health Products" firms contributed $154,000 to his campaign funds in 2003-2004 (expand the "Health" section). That included a very generous $9000 donation from Pfizer (manufacturer of Lipitor, the drug used in his example on the Senate floor). Perhaps Gregg isn't truly as concerned about terrorist pill bottles as he is in doing the bidding of his corporate buddies. There's no way that big pharma has any interest in creating new competition for their overpriced products in the US marketplace. And Gregg has no interest in making big pharma angry. Got to keep the gravy train running!

Another little factoid makes me think that Gregg may be a bit hypocritical when he offers us his "Al Qaeda in a bottle" argument. He voted in favor of the Senate illegal immigration shamnesty bill that would add 50 million new strangers to our fine country. If Gregg is so worried about Al Qaeda's devious attempts at infiltration, shouldn't he start by tightening the screws down on movement of people into the country? Why would Al Qaeda sneak bad stuff over in a bottle when they can just walk across the border with a nuke?

I'm sorry, Senator. Your protestations just don't pass the sniff test.

So the answer seems simple for Grandma and Grandpa Q. Citizen. They would have to donate more than $154K to Gregg's campaign coffers every two years. It seems like that is his prevailing market-based rate. Once the check clears, they would probably find that they have a friendly ear and pliable ally in Senator Gregg. Of course, $154K would just be the tip of the iceberg. The Citizen family would also need to donate a similar amount to a number of other politicians to get enough of them to turn on their corporate donors and ultimately get this enacted into law. Yep, it would take several hundred wheelbarrows full of money to play this game. That just seems to be the price of admission.

Of course, if Grandma and Grandpa had that much money lying around, they probably wouldn't need to sneak drugs in from Canada, now would they?