ALBANY, New York (AP) -- A federal agency has begun notifying all 50 states that they don't have to offer Medicaid-funded Viagra to sex offenders, a step taken after it was discovered that more than 400 convicted sex offenders in New York and Florida were reimbursed for the erectile dysfunction drug.

Their crimes included offenses against children as young as 2, Comptroller Alan Hevesi said. The report sent the Bush administration scrambling to find a way to close the loophole.

Laura Ahearn, executive director of Parents for Megan's Law, an advocacy group named for a New Jersey girl raped and killed in 1994 by a convicted sex offender, praised the government's move as "the most proactive measure they can take to ensure that individual states can legislate what their values are."

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