Massachusetts already has a monopoly on highway services on the Turnpike. If MassDOT commercializes the other rest areas, it won’t create new demand for food or gas. It would only transfer sales that would have benefited local communities to the state, threatening well-established small businesses and the jobs they have created, along with the local taxes they pay.
As for interstate-serving businesses fearing competition, Globe editorial writers should travel the interstate a little more often and visit one of the exits. With businesses going toe to toe on fuel, food, and everything else, they would find that competition is alive and well.
Peter Romano
President and chief operating officer
Independent Oil Marketers Association
North Falmouth
An alternative in the face of drug shortagesYOUR RECENT story on the shortage of cancer drugs (“Scrambling for cancer drugs,’’ Page A1, Aug. 17) called attention to this national crisis, and it illustrated just how difficult this situation is for the patients who are battling cancer as well as their families and the doctors and pharmacists who treat them.
There is a solution to the growing shortages. When a drug becomes unavailable because of back orders or manufacturing problems, it can often be prepared by local compounding pharmacies on a per-patient basis. These specialized pharmacies have “clean rooms’’ where they can prepare medications with the same raw materials used by manufacturers. Compounding pharmacies are highly regulated and follow well-established procedures, so the medicines that they prepare are just as safe and effective as a drug that is mass produced. There are compounding pharmacies located across Eastern Massachusetts.
Patients should know that there is a resource available that doesn’t involve getting on a plane or driving several states away.
Ernest P. Gates Jr.
President
Gates Healthcare Associates
Middleton
David G. Miller
Executive vice president and CEO
International Academy of Compounding Pharmacists
Alexandria, Va.
