Citing legislative powers of the Senate on the non-implementation of laws it had crafted and on allegations of unfair trade practices, the Senate trade and commerce committee on Monday vowed to investigate the alleged bullying by a multinational pharmaceutical company to force Filipinos to buy its more expensive medicine.

Senator Manuel Roxas II, committee chairman, said he was forced to initiate the inquiry following the complaint of a group of stroke victims that a Mercury Drugstore branch allegedly refused to sell the cheaper anti-hypertension drug, ‘’Avamax,’’ because of threats of legal action from Pfizer which markets the ‘’Lipitor’’ brand.

Roxas said this is the nth time that he, being the primary author of the Cheaper Medicines Act, providing measures so the government could cut drug prices drastically to benefit consumers, intervened with the Senate’s legislative powers to make Pfizer and other pharmaceutical companies lower their prices to match those in other countries.

Roxas is the vice presidential candidate of the Liberal Party (LP) in the 2010 elections.

In Senate Resolution 1483 he filed on the issue, Roxas cited a complaint of actor Subas Herrero, a stroke victim and a diabetes patient, on behalf of a group of stroke victims that Mercury Drugstore does not sell the generic version of Pfizer’s ‘’Lipitor’’ brand of anti-hypertension drug because of threats of legal action from Pfizer.

Roxas recalled that Pfizer had sued United Laboratories Inc. which manufactures the cheaper ‘’Avamax’’ brand for allegedly violating the patent on the drug ‘’Atorvastatin calcium.’’

Pfizer has also threatened drugstores nationwide to stop selling ‘’Avamax’’ even if it is 50 percent cheaper than the popular brand ‘’Lipitor.’’

This falls under the Senate power to investigate possible unfair trade practices of Pfizer and other multinational pharmaceutical companies that threaten Filipinos’ access to cheaper but quality medicines, Roxas said.

‘’Pfizer’s demand from retail drugstores to stop selling the generic version of Atorvastatin Calcium and to forever desist from promoting the same can be seen as a means to prevent the manufacture, marketing and sale of competing or rival products like the generic version of Atorvastatin Calcium under the guise of intellectual property protection despite the provision in the law (RA 9502) which disallows extensions of patents for new users,” the Roxas resolution stated.

Roxas stressed that the Cheaper Medicines Law “specifically amended pertinent provisions of the Intellectual Property Code of the Philippines and liberalized the application of intellectual property laws, in order to promote wider competition, with the intention of lowering the prices of medicines.”