Prescription Justice Releases “Myths and Facts” on Drug Importation
Americans are told, time and again, that importing prescription drugs is unsafe, illegal, or impractical. Those claims are repeated so often that they begin to sound like settled fact. They are not.
At the same time, a more immediate issue is unfolding. Each year, Americans order lower-cost prescription drugs for personal use—only to have many of those orders stopped and destroyed at international mail facilities, even when they are intended for legitimate treatment. The result is simple: patients lose access to affordable medications they were counting on.
Today, Prescription Justice is publishing a new resource—Prescription Drug Importation: Myths and Facts—to set the record straight.
The document brings together the best available evidence to clarify what drug importation actually looks like in practice. It shows that millions of Americans already rely on personal importation to afford their medications, often paying dramatically lower prices for the same drugs. It explains that many of these medicines are manufactured in the same facilities, by the same companies, and under regulatory systems in peer countries that provide strong—and in some respects stronger—safeguards for patient safety.
It also addresses a core legal misconception. Drug importation is not categorically illegal. Federal law regulates it—and in key respects supports personal importation, particularly where it does not pose an unreasonable risk to patients.
The purpose of this resource is straightforward: to move the conversation away from slogans and toward facts. Policymakers should not be making decisions based on exaggerated risks or incomplete descriptions of the law. They should be looking at how importation already works, why Americans depend on it, and how it can be done safely at scale.
Prescription Justice will continue to advocate for policies that expand safe access to lower-cost imported medicines—including personal importation under FDA enforcement discretion, lawful personal importation, and broader reforms for wholesale importation that will allow Americans to eventually obtain the same pricing available in other high-income countries at local U.S. pharmacies.
The facts are there. Let’s come together across the political spectrum to act on them.