Lower drug prices in Canada and other countries will keep luring Americans, and the government needs to make sure the medicines people buy are safe, witnesses told a U.S. task force on Wednesday.

“People are going to Canada, whether we like it or not,” Wisconsin Gov. Jim Doyle said.

“They are going in bigger and bigger numbers because the simple dollars demand it, and it is the only option that some of them have,” said Doyle, who has defied the federal government by running a Web site directing state residents to three Canadian pharmacies.

Others warned that legalizing imported drugs would present serious safety risks that were not worth any cost savings.

Rick Roberts, a patient who said he received counterfeit supplies of an AIDS drug from a U.S. pharmacy, told the task force that legalizing drug imports would make it easier for criminals to get fake drugs into the U.S. supply system, a concern echoed by the FDA and the drug industry.

“The longer the distribution chain, the more doors that are open to let these bad guys do what they do, which is to make money off of sick people,” Roberts said.

The Department of Health and Human Services task force is studying whether the United States could establish a system to ensure imported drugs are safe. Members of Congress from both parties are pressuring the government to set up a legal system as high drug prices gain increasing attention in an election year.

“It is time for the FDA to stop doing the bidding of the drug lobby and start helping states like Wisconsin to implement a safe system,” Doyle said.

More than 87,000 people have visited Wisconsin’s Web site in the past six weeks, Doyle said. He did not yet know how many decided to purchase prescription drugs from the listed pharmacies.

AN OUNCE OF PREVENTION

Pharmacist Tom Curb, who received an FDA warning for helping Montgomery, Alabama, employees import medicines from Canada, said regulators had a responsibility to put safeguards in place.

Ignoring potential safety measures “will create a preventable yet grave and imminent danger to American consumers, ” Curb said.

Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson has said he hopes the task force will produce a report by July.

“It’s an extraordinarily complex topic that challenges the best minds in the field,” said Surgeon General Richard Carmona, the task force chairman.