By Bay City News
Pharmaceutical and biotechnology groups filed a lawsuit on Friday which challenges an Alameda County ordinance requiring drug makers to pay for programs to dispose of expired and unused drugs.
Passed by a unanimous vote of the Alameda County Board of Supervisors on July 24, the ordinance is the first such law in the country.
The suit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, alleges that the ordinance violates the commerce clause in the U.S. Constitution for three reasons, including that it regulates and burdens interstate commerce and its main purpose and effect is to shift the costs of a local regulatory program directly onto interstate commerce and out-of-county customers.
It says the ordinance also discriminates against interstate commerce by targeting such commerce and products delivered from outside the
county for burdens and by favoring local interests "by deliberately shifting
costs away from local consumers and taxpayers and onto drug manufacturers and pharmaceutical customers nationwide."
The suit alleges, "If this novel ordinance were permissible, then Alameda County could likewise require interstate news publications to conduct the county's paper recycling program or require interstate food producers to collect and dispose of all spoiled food or similar garbage."
The suit asks that the ordinance be declared unconstitutional and that its implementation be stopped. It also asks for unspecified costs and attorneys' fees.
The suit was filed by the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, the Generic Pharmaceutical Association and the Biotechnology Industry Organization. All three industry groups are based in Washington, D.C.
When the ordinance was passed, Board of Supervisors President Nate Miley said it is needed because the improper and careless disposal of prescription drugs and the illegal resale of prescription drugs puts members of the public, particularly children and the elderly, at risk of being poisoned.
In passing the measure, the board said another reason for the ordinance is that groundwater and drinking water "are being contaminated by unwanted, leftover or expired prescription drugs passing through our wastewater and treatment centers."
The ordinance requires drug manufacturers and producers to pay for the disposal of their products or face fines of up to $1,000 per day.
Alameda County residents currently can drop off their old medications at 28 drop-off locations but the program costs the county about $330,000 a year.
If the lawsuit is unsuccessful, companies affected by the ordinance have until next July, one year after it passed, to submit their plans to comply.
Back to your table, rich man, and take care not to step on Lazarus' hand while you step over him!
Consumers of products have always been responsible for their disposal, not the manufacturers. Do you expect GM to take your Chevy Cruze to the junker when you're done with it? Get a sense of responsibility.
But beyond your repeated admissions of ignorance, I would invite you to take a look at the death rates from heart disease for example. Perhaps you'd learn that magically through no part of the eeeevil drug companies assuredly, the death rate from it has dropped over 50% in the past 30 years, curiously coinciding the with clearly useless development of excellent (and now mostly generic) anti-hypertensives and anti-cholesterol drugs. As for the "disposal fee" again, be responsible for your own trash. After all, you could always choose to not take your pills, have nothing to throw away, and die sooner. Enjoy.
Who do you "pay" to junk your car? I've never paid anyone; I either have gotten some money back from the scrap dealer or called it even after letting a scrap dealer tow it. Why should I pay the car company to do something I can do either at no cost or at a small reimbursement to myself? Throw your own **** stuff away. Properly, of course.
Also, I don’t know of any small business oil or drug companies. Of course the BIg Oil and Big Pharma monopolize the market. Laws are made for them.
For what it's worth, the Supreme Court has been willing recently to limit the scope of the Commerce Clause when it comes to regulating guns near schools, http://billofrightsinstitute.org/resources/educator-resources/lessons-plans/landmark-cases-and-the-constitution/us-v-lopez-1995/ or protecting women against violence. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Morrison
Meanwhile y'all can stop calling each other names and contribute. Please.
Morrison held that Rape and Assault against women is not a Federal Crime and if the state of Virginia chose not to prosecute University of Virginia football players for rape and assault the state could do so. The more conservative nature of SCOTUS does not bode well for the Commerce Clause interpretation that has existed virtually intact since the narrow rulings after the War of Northern Aggression. I suspect that local courts will strike down Alameda's progressive law, and in so doing will cost all of us a good deal of financial resources better spent on other activities.
Just kidding!!!!
When my grandpa recently died of cancer the hospice nurse dumped his morphine drip contents down the toilet
The argument that we should let people be responsible for disposing of their own garbage makes the one terrible faulty assumption that people are responsible in the first place. If only pigs could fly! If that were the case, there would be no oil spills, no littered highways, and no midnight dumping of do-it-yourself oil changes into the storm drain systems, etc., etc., etc.
This isn't even a "problem." It's just the government wanting to shakedown companies to fund their cronies salaries.
ensuring proper disposal of RXs outside of the household waste stream, as they should be. Alameda County is merely trying to make sure that toxic chemicals like unused pharmaceuticals are safely disposed of--and not just flushed down the drain or the toilet. Flushing unused drugs down the toilet or tossing them in the trash only ensures that our RXs pollute the biosphere with toxic waste that will come back to "bite" us later on with unforeseen negative results. Making manufacturers responsible for the entire product life cycle is quite reasonable. We are paying for the costs of improper disposal now--it is just an unidentifiable social cost rather than being incorporated into the private cost of what we buy. (Tires and computers are two products whose disposal cost is incorporated up-front into the purchase price. Doing this simply factors the cost of disposal or recycling into the purchase price, which makes it a tangible private cost instead of a generalized social cost we all pay for anyway.)
You just exposed yourself for being an irrantional quack, you admit that your are talking about "unforeseen negative results" then go onto another diabtribe about "unidentifiable" or something is "unforeseen" and "unidentifiable" then what exactly are you looking for? Apparantly nothing, just something to "make" you feel good. And really Spangler, that's all that matters to people like yourself; "as long as it makes you feel good, then demand it".
Grow up.
David, the consumer has never been entrusted with the responsibility of disposal. Government has always stepped in to prohibit the dumping of things, after the consumers did a good job of poisoning either themselves or the later users of the area. Think Love Canal, most of New Jersey and Nevada as well as large portions on New Mexico and Eastern Washington. Remember that the Super Fund is paid by our taxes and not those of creators of toxic landscapes. In reality I expect the producer of the problem to clean it up. If folks dump drugs in to the water supply then I expect them to clean up the water supply. That is done through taxes which we vote on. I am not voting for more taxes. But then I do not toss pharmaceuticals in to the landfill, down the drain or in to the bay.