Cardinal Health in $11 mln settlement with Spitzer

[Joanne98]

By Jonathan Stempel

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Cardinal Health Inc., one of the largest U.S. prescription drug distributors, said on Tuesday it will pay $11 million to settle a probe by New York State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer into improper secondary market trading of pharmaceuticals.

The settlement is the first in the attorney general's probe into trading practices in the market in which wholesalers trade drugs among themselves after they are sold by manufacturers, but before they are bought by pharmacies and hospitals.

Spitzer said in a statement that such trading is not necessarily illegal, but can cause unreliable or counterfeit drugs to enter the marketplace, or cause drugs to be diverted outside their intended distribution channels. The probe began in April 2005.

Dublin, Ohio-based Cardinal will pay $7 million to the nonprofit Health Research Inc., $3 million to the state, and $1 million to cover the investigation's costs. The company will also adopt standards to ensure the safe trading of drugs.

Cardinal cooperated with the probe, shut its pharmaceutical trading company in the summer of 2005, and stopped buying drugs in the secondary market last December, Spitzer said.

http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=domesticNews&storyID=2006-12-26T210713Z_01_N26311467_RTRUKOC_0_US-CARDINALHEALTH-SPITZER.xml&WTmodLoc=USNewsHome_C2_domesticNews-1

Remember when the thugs tried to tell Americans not to buy drugs from Canada because of counterfeit concerns? Well the problem wasn't with Canadian drugs, it was with American ones. Eliot Spitzer is an angel sent from Heaven.