What's Left for Canadians If Americans Buy Their Drugs?




Home \| Elder Rights \| Health \| Pension Watch \| Rural Aging \| Links \| Gallery \| Resources

	SEARCH	SUBSCRIBE
			Mission \| Contact Us \| Internships \| Donate Now!

back

What's Left for Canadians If Americans Buy Their Drugs?

By Tasmin Carlisle, The Wall Street Journal
November 4, 2003

A Canadian pharmacists' group is blaming the burgeoning trade in prescription-drug sales to U.S. patients for reported instances of local drug shortages.

Barry Power, a director of the Canadian Pharmacists Association, says his organization has been hearing from members across the country that supply problems are cropping up more often and lasting longer than before the Internet pharmacies set up shop.

While Canada's federal health ministry says it doesn't have any evidence that the online pharmacies are causing shortages, a senior official acknowledged last week that swelling cross-border sales raise that risk.

In a letter to provincial regulators, pharmacy associations and medical groups, Health Canada Assistant Deputy Minister Diane Gorman said the federal agency "regards this as a very serious matter." The letter requested any "information regarding early indications of drug-supply problems" or "trends regarding drug supply, safety concerns or impacts on human resources which may pose risks to Canadians' health."

The Canadian International Pharmacy Association, which represents Canadian pharmacies offering U.S. mail-order service over the Internet, estimates that total sales by its members will reach roughly $800 million this year, with more than $1 billion in sales projected for 2004. The association reckons Canada currently has between 120 and 140 Internet pharmacies, compared with 10 in 1999.

Several big pharmaceutical companies, including Pfizer Inc. and GlaxoSmithKline PLC, have said they would limit sales of patent-protected prescription drugs to Canada over concerns that Canadian Internet pharmacies are re-exporting the drugs to the U.S. One of the latest companies to do so is Eli Lilly & Co., Indianapolis, which started limiting drug sales to Canadian pharmacies last week.

The prairie province of Manitoba , where many of the Internet pharmacies are based, has generated much of the talk of local shortages.

Michele Fontaine, vice president of the Coalition for Manitoba Pharmacy -- a group of traditional pharmacists opposed to the Internet drugstores -- says she recently has had difficulty obtaining enough of two cancer drugs and a blood-pressure drug to fill prescriptions for her customers at a chainstore outlet in Winnipeg , the province's major city. As a result, she has had to ration pills, she says. One of the drugs, Purinethol, made by Glaxo and distributed by Israel's Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd., is used for treating leukemia in children.

"We are almost panicked by the thought of having to tell a parent of a child with leukemia that we couldn't get the drug," Ms. Fontaine said.

A spokesman for Teva said that there shouldn't be shortages of the drug, although there previously had been a manufacturing hitch with the product.

Ms. Fontaine said other medications in short supply in the sparsely populated province include Temodal, used to treat brain tumors, and 240 milligram-dose Chronovera, a blood-pressure medication. Temodal is made by Schering-Plough Corp., of Kenilworth, N.J., and Chronovera by New York-based Pfizer.

Ms. Fontaine say shortages of particular drugs occur from time to time in Canada for a number of reasons, but that the rise of the Internet pharmacies is compounding the problem. She says she recently had to spend hours trying to obtain products from Canadian drug wholesalers that are readily available to U.S. patients with prescriptions through Canadian Internet pharmacies.

Don Sancton, a spokesman for Pfizer's Canadian unit, said Chronovera 240 mg has been in short supply "for some months" due to a manufacturing problem in Canada that is expected to last "a couple of months longer." He said he was surprised to hear that the product is available from some Internet pharmacies.

Schering-Plough didn't return calls seeking comment.

Due to federal regulation of drug pricing in Canada , U.S. patients can obtain prescription medications from Canadian Internet pharmacies at substantial discounts to their retail prices in the U.S. Some U.S. patients, especially senior citizens without medical insurance, say this is the only way they can afford to fill their prescriptions. But big drug companies say they depend on profits from U.S. sales to fund pharmaceutical research and development. They also point out that the cross-border drug trade is illegal under U.S. federal law.

Several financially strapped U.S. states say they will enact laws allowing state employees to buy drugs from Canada . Meanwhile, pressure is growing in Washington to allow in the inexpensive imports, to the protests of the drug manufacturers. The Food and Drug Administration, however, has expressed concerns that easier importation laws could compromise quality control and make life easier for pharmaceutical counterfeiters.

In a research report, Prudential Financial analysts Diane Duston and Tim M. Anderson say that Canadian government data show a rise in Canadian pharmaceutical imports from offshore sources such as Bulgaria , Pakistan , Argentina , South Africa and Singapore , possibly indicating that Internet pharmacies are finding ways around drug company efforts to choke off their supplies