Friday, December 17, 2004
Importing drugs from where?
[Christopher Rowland, "Drugs from anywhere," The Boston Globe, 16 December 2004.]
As Canadian drug supplies increasingly dry up and American demand rises with state governments like Kansas encouraging the practice of importation, suppliers are looking elsewhere to fill orders:
At the back of the steel warehouse, pharmacists in lab coats are fetching bottles of prescription drugs from dimly lit shelves. They bear labels in French, Spanish, and Italian. Some come from New Zealand, 8,225 miles away.
Next stop: Minnesota.
The importation of drugs from abroad, which is illegal under US law, is going global, and this is the newest beachhead. Increasingly stymied at home, Canadian Internet pharmacies are branching out. They are setting up operations outside of Canada to buy drugs from around world and shipping them to US consumers.
The Bahamas warehouse is operated by CanadaRx.net, a Hamilton, Ontario, company that has been running a website since 1998. Exactly how many Canadian operations have set up shop elsewhere is unclear, but the Canadian International Pharmacy Association says it knows of operations similar to CanadaRx.net in St. Kitts and Barbados.
The new arrangement is a far cry from the relatively simple practice of recent years in which Canadian Internet pharmacies bought US drugs and shipped them to US customers. Americans didn't worry because the drugs were coming from the US-regulated factories and were vastly cheaper than the local drugstore. But globalization raises a question for American consumers who are tempted by discounts of 20 to 80 percent: Is it safe?
In a letter to Representative Bernard Sanders of Vermont, a staunch advocate of prescription imports, the FDA drew attention to illegal schemes [Harvey Organ, a pharmacist who is president and owner of CanadaRx.net] participated in during the 1990s in Canada. Organ pleaded guilty in 1998 to 12 civil charges and paid fines of $300,000 for circumventing Canadian price regulations for pharmaceuticals.
Organ said the six-year-old case had no bearing on his operation in the Bahamas or any of his business with American consumers.
"We're a class act. We do everything by the book," he said.
The drugs in the Bahamian warehouse during a recent visit by a Globe reporter tell a story of convoluted supply lines. The drugs moved from a regulated world into an unregulated one.
Tablets of the migraine medication Zomig stored along the warehouse's back wall, for example, were manufactured in England by AstraZeneca. AstraZeneca sent them to France, where they were put into a package with a French label. Before the Zomig could be sold to French consumers, an English wholesaler brought them back to England, pasted an English label over the French, and then sold them to the mail-order pharmacy in the Bahamas. Another AstraZeneca drug, Zestril, followed a similarly contorted route from Spain.
A spokeswoman for AstraZeneca, Kellie Caldwell, said the shipment of these AstraZeneca drugs out of the European Union is an improper diversion, leaving consumers without any protection.
"Once a drug leaves the EU, there is no longer a governing body responsible for tracking that product or ensuring that it is stored in required conditions," she said. For example, Zomig is supposed to be stored at between 68 and 74 degrees, she said, and she questioned whether the warehouse temperatures in the Bahamas, particularly during power outages, exceeded that range.
[Matthew Hisrich, "Sebelius Is Practicing Black-Market Politics," The Wichita Eagle, 10 December 2004.]
[Christopher Rowland, "Drugs from anywhere," The Boston Globe, 16 December 2004.]
As Canadian drug supplies increasingly dry up and American demand rises with state governments like Kansas encouraging the practice of importation, suppliers are looking elsewhere to fill orders:
At the back of the steel warehouse, pharmacists in lab coats are fetching bottles of prescription drugs from dimly lit shelves. They bear labels in French, Spanish, and Italian. Some come from New Zealand, 8,225 miles away.
Next stop: Minnesota.
The importation of drugs from abroad, which is illegal under US law, is going global, and this is the newest beachhead. Increasingly stymied at home, Canadian Internet pharmacies are branching out. They are setting up operations outside of Canada to buy drugs from around world and shipping them to US consumers.
The Bahamas warehouse is operated by CanadaRx.net, a Hamilton, Ontario, company that has been running a website since 1998. Exactly how many Canadian operations have set up shop elsewhere is unclear, but the Canadian International Pharmacy Association says it knows of operations similar to CanadaRx.net in St. Kitts and Barbados.
The new arrangement is a far cry from the relatively simple practice of recent years in which Canadian Internet pharmacies bought US drugs and shipped them to US customers. Americans didn't worry because the drugs were coming from the US-regulated factories and were vastly cheaper than the local drugstore. But globalization raises a question for American consumers who are tempted by discounts of 20 to 80 percent: Is it safe?
In a letter to Representative Bernard Sanders of Vermont, a staunch advocate of prescription imports, the FDA drew attention to illegal schemes [Harvey Organ, a pharmacist who is president and owner of CanadaRx.net] participated in during the 1990s in Canada. Organ pleaded guilty in 1998 to 12 civil charges and paid fines of $300,000 for circumventing Canadian price regulations for pharmaceuticals.
Organ said the six-year-old case had no bearing on his operation in the Bahamas or any of his business with American consumers.
"We're a class act. We do everything by the book," he said.
The drugs in the Bahamian warehouse during a recent visit by a Globe reporter tell a story of convoluted supply lines. The drugs moved from a regulated world into an unregulated one.
Tablets of the migraine medication Zomig stored along the warehouse's back wall, for example, were manufactured in England by AstraZeneca. AstraZeneca sent them to France, where they were put into a package with a French label. Before the Zomig could be sold to French consumers, an English wholesaler brought them back to England, pasted an English label over the French, and then sold them to the mail-order pharmacy in the Bahamas. Another AstraZeneca drug, Zestril, followed a similarly contorted route from Spain.
A spokeswoman for AstraZeneca, Kellie Caldwell, said the shipment of these AstraZeneca drugs out of the European Union is an improper diversion, leaving consumers without any protection.
"Once a drug leaves the EU, there is no longer a governing body responsible for tracking that product or ensuring that it is stored in required conditions," she said. For example, Zomig is supposed to be stored at between 68 and 74 degrees, she said, and she questioned whether the warehouse temperatures in the Bahamas, particularly during power outages, exceeded that range.
[Matthew Hisrich, "Sebelius Is Practicing Black-Market Politics," The Wichita Eagle, 10 December 2004.]
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