Gov. Jim Doyle launched a website Tuesday allowing Wisconsin residents to buy prescription drugs online from Canada.

This expansion of the state’s prescription-drug website gives citizens the opportunity to buy drugs directly from a Canadian pharmacy that Wisconsin officials have found to be “safe, reputable, and reliable,” Dan Leistikow, Gov. Doyle’s press secretary, said.

“Drugs in Canada can be 50 to 70 percent cheaper than they are in the U.S., and this is a way for citizens to save on their drug bills,” Leistikow said.

According to Leistikow, citizens’ drug bills have been increasing dramatically, sometimes forcing Wisconsin residents to make tradeoffs between paying for medicine and using money for other things.

“This is a very straightforward way that we can help citizens of Wisconsin lower their drug bills, which in some cases can be thousands of dollars every month,” Leistikow said.

Fed up with the high costs of prescription drugs, Doyle is following Minnesota’s lead and is bringing what he thinks is a better deal to Wisconsin residents. Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty launched a website late last month that made Minnesota the first state to legally provide information about prescriptions drugs to state residents and about ordering prescriptions from Canadian pharmacies.

But the websites are not supported by everyone. Both the Food and Drug Administration and the Bush administration oppose the importation of prescription drugs from Canada, arguing consumer safety could be jeopardized because prescription drugs from other countries are not subject to the same safeguards as those purchased in the United States.

“Americans must have confidence in their medications,” Tommy G. Thomson, secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, said in a release issued by the FDA.

Bill Pierce, a representative of the Department of Health and Human Services, said unregulated drugs coming from outside the United States are prohibited from entering the U.S. market due primarily to safety concerns.

The FDA’s Counterfeit Drug Task Force expresses the Bush Administration’s concern about such potential safety issues as contamination and the use of inactive ingredients that could be created by the importation of prescription drugs.

“It doesn’t matter how they come into the U.S. market; they are forbidden,” Pierce said. “It is illegal and prohibited to bring drugs in.”

Leistikow defended importing drugs, saying the governor is tackling an issue the Bush Administration has been unwilling to address. He does not believe that this website violates federal regulations.

“The FDA has made threats through the media, but they are not taking any action against Minnesota’s site, so we are taking that as a sign of approval,” he said.

Despite the FDA’s disapproval, Doyle’s plan to help Wisconsin consumers reduce soaring drug bills remains unhampered, as of yet. Wisconsin residents can visit http://drugsavings.wi.gov to get prescription drugs from Canada.