The price of asthma drugs varies wildly across the city and many pharmacies don’t observe the New York Drug Price List Law, which requires drugstores upon request to give customers a price list of the 150 most widely prescribed drugs, a new survey shows.

The 19-page report by Assemblyman Jeff Klein, titled “Shopping for Asthma Drugs: A Survey of Prices in New York City,” examines the prices of 10 popular asthma drugs at 149 chain and independent pharmacies.

Independent pharmacies were generally cheaper than chain ones, the report found. Among the chain pharmacies, CVS had the cheapest prices, and Rite Aid had the highest, with Duane Reade falling in between.

An independent pharmacy in Manhattan had the most expensive prices for asthma medication, where a market basket of 10 asthma drugs cost $1,080.50, the survey found. The cheapest was an independent pharmacy in Brooklyn, where the same drugs could be had for $486.39.

The drugs cost an average of $682.49 across the city, with Manhattan being the most expensive borough and Brooklyn the cheapest. Queens, the Bronx, and Staten Island were second, third, and fourth, respectively.

The survey found 66% of pharmacies in compliance with a state law that requires them to provide customers with a price list of a 150 drugs upon request. 696 1263 795 1275

Mr. Klein of the Bronx is the chairman of the Committee on Oversight, Analysis and Investigation. He is running for the Senate seat vacated by Guy Velella, who pleaded guilty to bribery charges in June.

The report was issued a day after Attorney General Eliot Spitzer unveiled a new statewide Web site which lets New Yorkers compare prices for prescription drugs at 170 pharmacies across the state. The Web site, located at www.NYAGRx.org, received more than 526,000 “hits” yesterday, the Associated Press reported.

Mr. Klein’s report echoes the findings of many previous surveys on prescription drug prices in New York. In 2002 and 2003,the city’s Department of Consumer Affairs found wide fluctuations in drug prices, sometimes within the same neighborhood.

A 2002 survey by Mr. Spitzer also reported price discrepancies and a poor compliance with the New York Drug Price List Law, which sparked the creation of the statewide drug price comparison Web site.

Last year, a similar report by Mr. Klein found that some stores charged more for prescription drugs in poor and minority communities. More recently, the New York Public Interest Research Group issued a critical statewide report that cited “huge” prices differences for the same drugs.

New York City has some of the nation’s highest hospitalization and death rates linked to asthma, a preventable and controllable disease with the right medication. One in four children under the age of 13 who live in Harlem suffer from asthma, according to a 2003 study by Columbia University. The Bronx has the worst asthma rates among the five boroughs.

A spokesman for the Chain Pharmacy Association of New York State did not immediately return calls for comment.