States Reviewing Drug Safety Themselves

WASHINGTON - As Congress and others lobby to create an independent board to review the safety of prescription drugs, a dozen states have been doing just that.

State officials who manage billions of dollars in annual drug purchases joined together in a project to help them comparison shop, picking the most effective and safest choices from a slew of competing drugs. Their efforts had an unexpected result.

By taking a closer look at a half-dozen existing studies, the project raised safety questions about Vioxx as early as 2002. Two of the earliest member states — Oregon and Washington — used that independent analysis to remove Vioxx from lists of preferred drugs that doctors use when prescribing medication for Medicaid recipients.

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