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I've always considered making it legal for Americans to import their prescription drugs a free-trade issue. Imports create competition and keep domestic industry more responsive to consumers.

We've had a long wrangle with the pharmaceutical industry about parallel imports, and what we were saying is we want to make medicines and drugs as affordable as a possible to what is largely a poor population.

Imports create competition and keep domestic industry more responsive to consumers. In the United States, we import everything consumers want. So why not pharmaceuticals?

Indeed, we must foster cost-saving competition. And that means joining the marketplace of other industrialized countries - not just for the manufacturers who sell drugs, but for consumers as well.

When in some communities selling drugs is so lucrative that that's a pretty big enticement that we have to break down. Part of that is by making opportunities and paying decent wages.

If you destroyed half the pharmaceutical production in the United States, we'd think it's a pretty serious problem. In fact, we'd probably go to war.

I believe that the war on drugs is a tragically misplaced use of resources - an immoral venture that produces far more suffering than it alleviates.

It's also very important in Latin America. If we can deal with the drug problem there, some of their strife there, it's less likely we have immigration problems here.

It has become much more difficult to smuggle dangerous substances across our borders over the past three years, and this is creating real problems for drug traffickers.

The United States has an active pharmaceutical industry that has brought huge benefits to the U.S. public. Most Americans, who benefit from these advances, have little understanding of how difficult it is to create an important new medical therapy and make it available to improve public health.