• Did you know between 50,000-100,000 Americans die every year from adverse reactions to pharmaceutical drugs that have been approved by the Food and Drug Administration? (Admittedly, a portion of blame may lie with prescribing doctors, hospital nurses, or pharmacists.)

• Mistakes made in “administering drugs, often in hospitals” are the fourth, or sixth, leading cause of death in the country, report investigators Donald L. Bartlett and James B. Steele, writing in a Time magazine cover story.

Now, you properly ask: “This being true, why doesn’t the FDA open an inquiry, searching for answers to why so many needless deaths occur? Or at the very least, conduct a national safety campaign, instructing seniors on the inherent dangers in drugs—even ones prescribed.”

Instead, the FDA is spending time, and resources, making it difficult (indeed unlawful!) for elderly citizens to buy American-made drugs in Canada or Mexico? And, purchased at considerable savings to beleaguered older consumers.

(Note: one-in-four seniors is said to skip doses, or won’t fill a prescription, because the cost is beyond him or her.)

On average, name brand Rx drugs purchased in Canada cost 40 percent less than in the United States. The reason is elementary: because health care is the issue, the Canadian government imposes price controls. Imagine?

• Next, did you realize the state of Minnesota, thanks to aggressive Gov. Tim Pawlenty (a Republican, who is a friend to Vice President Dick Cheney), has an informational web site listing 800 drugs sold by two Canadian pharmacies? “You shouldn’t have to get on a bus to get a fair deal on prescription medicines,” Pawlenty argues. “You should just have to get on line.”

Meantime, some 20 other states, from Alabama to Vermont, are considering kinder-gentler drug importation laws; and, there actually is a National Legislative Assn. on Prescription Drug prices. (Fact: Americans filled 33 billion prescriptions during 2002; plainly, this controversy is not going away.)

• Consider, the average profit margin of Fortune 500 companies in 2002 was 3.1 percent, while that same upside margin for the 10 leading drug firms was more than five times greater, at 17 percent.

• And, did you know there are 675 registered Washington lobbyists on drug company payrolls, more than one for every member of the House of Representatives (435 total), plus the United States Senate (100 total)?

Note: this is in addition to the 81,500 expertly-trained industry sales reps who hit the streets every workday, handing out free samples and goodies, such as free dinners, cruises and vacation trips to prescribing doctors and others with influence.

Were you aware the pharmaceutical industry gave nearly $30 million in political contributions last year, some $21.7 million or 74 percent of the total to the party in power?

• Ready for the drug industry’s sob story? The world’s best pharmaceutical customers (American consumers) pay the highest prices because manufacturers “need the money for research…” However, with thanks to James Surowiecki, a writer for The New Yorker, we can report “Big Pharma” is in a big slump: