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This news item has made the headlines in a few major papers
in Canada today.
U.S. targets Internet pharmacies
Health Canada co-operating with U.S. authoritiesTom Blackwell
National PostTuesday, November 11, 2003
ADVERTISEMENTArmed with a “slam-dunk” court ruling and help from Health Canada, U.S. regulators said yesterday they are plotting a crackdown on the cross-border trade in prescription drugs.
No one involved in the growing import of medication from north of the border is safe from prosecution, including mayors and governors keen on getting their constituents cheaper drugs, said a senior Food and Drug Administration official.
The FDA’s commissioner, Mark McLellan, is slated to meet with Health Canada officials in Ottawa a week from today to discuss this issue, said Peter Pitts, an associate commissioner of the agency.
“I don’t want to make predictions, but I can say that if you’re in the illegal Internet drug trade, you should probably get into another line of work,” Mr. Pitts said.
“We absolutely retain the right to enforce the law as we see fit, where we’re going to provide the greatest bang for the enforcement buck, where our enforcement action is going to do the most possible to protect the public health.”
He would not reveal exactly what measures are being planned, but said the agency is considering enhanced enforcement and is involving Canada in the planning.
“We are talking to Health Canada … to reach out to companies that flit across our border to do business in Canada,” said Mr. Pitts, a graduate of Montreal’s McGill University.
“We need to reach out to both federal and provincial authorities to make sure that Canadians as well are not sucked into this horrible whirlpool of Internet trade.”
The comments come in the wake of a court decision in Oklahoma last week that ordered the closure, temporarily at least, of a chain of 80 storefront operations across the United States that help Americans get prescriptions filled in Canada.
The stores, which arrange to have Canadian pharmacies mail drugs to American customers, were violating federal law and potentially harming people’s health, said Judge Claire Eagan of the U.S. District Court in Tulsa, Okla.
Canadian companies active in the business said yesterday the storefronts represent a small portion of the market and predicted demand from the U.S. will continue to grow, with sales already estimated at about $1-billion a year.
Tim Pawlenty, the Governor of Minnesota, is scheduled to visit Winnipeg tomorrow to meet with pharmacists and the provincial government and discuss his plans to help state residents import drugs from Canada.
But industry insiders acknowledged that a stepped-up enforcement campaign by the American regulator, backed by the courts, could make significant trouble for the industry.
“If the FDA continues to do what they’re doing and even more aggressively and decisions get upheld, we’ll all look back and say ‘Well, that [Oklahoma decision] was just the starting point,” said Mike Hicks, of Winnipeg-based CanadaMeds, one of the largest players in the industry.
However, he and other proponents of the industry said it is unlikely the FDA will begin to prosecute individuals who deal directly with Canadian pharmacies to have their prescriptions filled, and such patients represent the bulk of the market.
“It’s hard for us to see at this point that demand is going to drop. Demand is going to grow,” said Dave Schioler of the American Drug Club, also based in Manitoba.
The Oklahoma ruling may spell trouble for Rx Depot and as many as 3,000 other storefront operations in the U.S. that help import drugs from Canada, said Andy Troszok, spokesman for the Canadian International Pharmacy Association, which represents most of the cross-border druggists.
He suggested that the FDA might be open to liability claims in the U.S. from customers of such operations who see their supply of drugs suddenly cut off, and suffer as a result.
But Mr. Troszok foresees continued “stability” in the industry as a whole.
A spokesman for Gil Gutknecht, a U.S. congressman who is leading the fight to make the import of drugs from Canada legal, also dismissed the Oklahoma ruling as of little importance.
The sheer economics of having to pay the world’s highest prescription drug prices will continue to compel Americans to look north of the border, said Bryan Anderson, a Gutknecht aide.
“It’s not going to stop this revolution of American consumers,” he said of the decision. Meanwhile, members of the Congress and Senate negotiating a bill to reform the U.S. medicare system for senior citizens are discussing a section that would legalize import of cheaper drugs from Canada.
http://www.nationalpost.com/home/story.html?id=BCAC7124-328C-409E-AA3F-39F1A672F449
