Americans are blissfully ignorant about where their drugs come from. Some think they come from the Food and Drug Administration. Others credit the National Institutes of Health and pharmaceutical companies.

We don't think about how medicines reach our medicine chest or, for that matter, how they work because they by and large are safe and effective. But, if left to the political whims of some legislators, that could change. Dangerous drugs - counterfeit, expired, subpotent and superpotent drugs - are passing through Canada into the medicine cabinets of Americans from places like Cyprus, Thailand, Portugal, Costa Rica, China, India, Pakistan, Iran and Belize.

Global Internet drug dealers are using the facade of the Canadian maple leaf to lull unsuspecting Americans into thinking they're getting a bargain. But, as my father used to say, sometimes a bargain is just too expensive. Some legislators are bargaining that a few good headlines are worth compromising the public health. For example, Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., is sponsoring legislation that would allow Americans to order drugs from more than 20 countries including Estonia, Latvia, Hungary and Slovakia.

Where do these drugs come from? Unfortunately, there is no precise answer. And that's a big problem.

Sen. Dorgan and others talk about "Canadian" drugs as safe and effective. And they're right. But these aren't the drugs that Americans who think they're "getting a deal" are getting when their bargain drugs arrive in the mail.

In addition to the hundreds of foreign Web sites that profess to be Canadian but aren't, licensed Canadian Internet pharmacies are currently sending foreign drugs to their American customers that aren't even legal for sale in Canada!

That's why Health Canada - our northern neighbor's version of the FDA - consistently says it absolutely cannot and will not guarantee either the safety or the pedigree of drugs sent into the United States.

"I want to make sure that we don't have 250 million Americans buying drugs in Canada," said Canadian Minister of Health Ujjal Dosanjh in December. "We cannot be the drugstore for the United States." Dosanjh and his government are preparing to take action. Any American who wants a prescription from a Canadian pharmacy will soon have to visit with a physician in Canada.

Mr. Dosanjh is working to slam the door shut on those who would make the Internet North America's 21st-century virtual drug cartel. This move will protect the public health of both nations.

It also means that legislating the importation of drugs "from Canada" is a canard. But you'd never know it by listening to the politicians. As my grandmother used to say, a half-truth is a whole lie, and in this case, it's a potentially disastrous one.

According to a recent Kaiser Family Foundation poll, a large majority of Americans support the importation of drugs from Canada. But the pollsters never asked about the drugs included in the legislation proposed by Sen. Dorgan and others.

But another poll, by the grassroots Seniors Coalition, did pose the question and the results were not surprising. Americans, and especially American seniors, do not want and do not trust drugs from "faraway lands of which we know little."

Just because a politician or a pundit says imported drugs are safe doesnÂ't make them so. The crucial issue of broader access to safe and affordable medicine is too important for politically popular sound bites.

It's time to start the hard work of finding real solutions. As H.L. Mencken noted in 1917: "There is always an easy solution to every human problem - neat, plausible and wrong." Drug importation is a non-starter.