Most people want their medications to be made in the United States and worry about the safety of relying on overseas suppliers for generic medicines, according to a new poll shared first with the Washington Examiner.
The survey of registered voters, conducted by Morning Consult for Americans for Safe Drugs, shows that voters want the Biden administration to conduct greater oversight of generic pharmaceuticals imported into the U.S. by foreign manufacturers. Big majorities favor inspections of facilities that have been flagged for violating federal regulations, 85%, halting imports, 84%, and testing the manufacturer’s products, 86%.
Voters said safety was their No. 1 priority when it comes to generic drugs, followed closely by concerns about U.S. dependency on China and India for key pharmaceuticals and ingredients.
“Substantial parts of the supply chain” are controlled by China and India, the Biden administration wrote last year as it called for greater transparency and new U.S. investment. Drug manufacturers are not required to disclose where the ingredients are sourced.
As part of a new advocacy push, Americans for Safe Drugs is launching national digital advertisements on Facebook and Twitter aimed at drawing awareness to generic drug imports from manufacturers violating the Food and Drug Administration’s safety regulations. The organization was created by the Coalition for a Prosperous America, a bipartisan trade group working to boost manufacturing in the U.S.
One spot highlights the FDA’s use of ‘Warning Letters’ to notify manufacturers of significant violations of federal rules while the firms continue to supply U.S. consumers. Another takes aim at Aurobindo Pharma, an Indian manufacturer of generic drugs that has come under FDA scrutiny for safety violations while producing pharmaceuticals for the U.S. market. In 2019, the company was found to be manufacturing a blood pressure medicine with high levels of carcinogenic impurity.
In 2018, the FDA announced that NDMA, a chemical and carcinogen once used in rocket fuel, was showing up in a widely used blood pressure medicine. Three companies that faced drug recalls bought the active ingredient implicated in the scandal from a major Chinese supplier. The recall ballooned to drugs made by some 10 different companies, sold to millions of people in countries around the world, raising the risk of cancer significantly for people taking a high dose of medications containing the tainted ingredient.
“For too long, Chinese and Indian drug manufacturers have flagrantly violated FDA’s safety regulations while flooding the U.S. with tens of millions of doses of potentially unsafe generic drugs,” Coalition for a Prosperous America Chairman Zach Mottl said. “Americans for Safe Drugs is going to expose this crisis that’s plaguing the U.S. healthcare system and endangering the health and lives of countless Americans. It’s time to put an end to this and bring generic drug manufacturing back to the U.S.”
The U.S. is dependent on pharmaceutical imports for a range of generic drugs, which represent about 90% of all prescription medicines filled in the country. Over two-thirds of generic drugs and 87% of key generic drug ingredients are made overseas, according to the Biden administration, with 80% of key ingredients made in factories in China or India.
The Biden administration pushed for essential medicines to be made in the U.S. after the coronavirus pandemic exposed fragile global supply chains, in part, by disrupting the flow of imported drugs and ingredients. President Joe Biden raised the problem as a national security imperative on the campaign trail.
“One thing we learned from the pandemic is that globalization broke down,” said Rosemary Gibson, chairwoman of the Coalition for a Prosperous America’s Healthcare Committee and author of ChinaRx. “More than 70 countries banned [exports of] medical products, including medicines and their components, the U.K., Italy, India, because they needed them for their own people.”
“So the notion we can, quote, ‘rely on our allies,’ that breaks down when you have a global pandemic,” she said.
Eighty-five percent of people surveyed by Morning Consult and Americans for Safe Drugs said they want the U.S. to become a leader in generic pharmaceutical manufacturing, with a plurality of Democrats, 44%, and Republicans, 49%, agreeing that this should be a top priority.
Most voters, 82%, also want the government to do more about foreign generic manufacturers price-gouging U.S. consumers after gaining a monopoly in the market and putting domestic companies out of business.
The survey of 2,005 registered voters was conducted between March 12-14, with a margin of error of plus or minus 2 percentage points.
Biden promised to shore up medicine supply chains while running for president and has emphasized the need to boost domestic drug manufacturing since taking office. The administration in February delivered a progress report on its efforts toward fortifying U.S. public health and medical preparedness supply chains, one of six analyses focused on the U.S. industrial base and food supply sectors. The review recognized vulnerabilities to the health supply chain that stem, among other reasons, from the challenges of incentivizing a private market to maintain capacity while competing against foreign firms with different expenditures.
While advocates agree that a diverse supply chain is necessary, they argue that the large federal expenditure on generic drugs could be used to incentivize domestic production and have urged the Biden administration to do more.
During the 2020 presidential campaign, Biden pledged in a “supply chain” manifesto to shore up U.S. pharmaceutical manufacturing, promising to leverage government purchasing power to incentivize companies to make drugs and key ingredients in the U.S. and to create a market for them by directing federal agencies to purchase their American-made products. He also called for tax code changes that would boost pharmaceutical production in the U.S.
Gibson said, “The Biden administration, their supply chain report on pharmaceuticals talked about this, but we have got to get going.”
