Consumers to Import Drugs From

¶ … Consumers to Import Drugs from Canada

Importation or smuggling? As drugs become more and more costly, the possibility of importing drugs from Canada has seemed increasingly attractive to many American consumers. Internet pharmacies offer cheap drugs from Canada-based online pharmacies and prescriptions can be obtained online without patients actually seeing a doctor in person. Such situations certain skirt the edge of legality, as do some persons who merely stroll across the border and stroll back with their medications without reporting this to customs agents. ("It's Easy to Get a Prescription Online but is it Legal, 2005, Healthy Place) But many of these Canada-bound shoppers are not looking for a ready supply of Prozac or a quick weight-loss pill, but are in search of medications such as insulin or heart medication that they cannot otherwise afford, or at least believe they cannot afford on a fixed income. Drugs in Canada typically cost one-third as much as drugs in the U.S. (Bast, 2005) And sales from such pharmacies have only been growing in the past several years. (Frederick, 2003) The issue of Canadian pharmacies' making available discount drugs to American consumers dramatizes the tension between the altruistic nature of medicine and the need for pharmaceutical companies to remain profitable enterprises. It highlights what constitutes fair medical practice in terms of the ethics of patients taking their healthcare into their own hands, versus allowing their health to rest in the hands of a physician.

Advocates of importing drugs argue that currently people are paying too much for necessary prescription drugs or cannot afford them at all in the U.S., and must pay unfairly high prices. They argue that the drug companies are making large profits from drugs that are unfairly marked up in the United States, in comparison to Canada, which has a national health care system and makes drugs affordable to all of its citizens. (Bast, 2005) Advocates for the drug companies counter that drug companies have a legitimate right to profit from their research and development, and if they did not, then new and better treatments would cease to be available. Even if drugs seem expensive, companies must make money before the drugs they have strived to develop run out of their patents. They also point out that drug prices are only about ten percent of total health care spending in America. (Bast, 2005) How much can consumers be saving?

Of course, merely because there are more overpriced arenas of American medicine does not mean that it is acceptable to overcharge for drugs. Still, most drug companies offer discount cards that offer significant discounts on their drugs to low-income consumers and while the industry's median profit of eighteen percent in 2001 may have been higher than any other industry, drug company investors and shareholders take on more risk than because they must make considerable expenditures to invest in experimental medical research that may or may not pay off in the long run. (Bast, 2005) Advocates for patients state that the practice is making criminals out of consumers who are doing what they need to do, simply to survive and that such profits are too high, regardless of the nature of the industry. (Basler, 2005)

Patient choice is another issue manifest in this controversy -- how much do patients have the right to assume agency over their own healthcare and its costs? Advocates of Canadian pharmacies argue that to prohibit buying Canadian drugs is a constraint upon consumer freedom. Consumers have the right to determine if the drugs are safe, which they often do because regulations in Canada pertaining to safety and drug tampering are just as strict as similar rules in the U.S. All 18 Canadian sites investigated by the General Accounting Office, wrote the journal Community Action in 2004, required consumers to supply a physician-written prescription before filling orders. That was the case for five of 29 U.S. pharmacies; no other foreign pharmacies did. Thus, consumers have the right to choice, and to find the best bargain, just as they might in any other commodity. (Bast, 2005) Viewed as such, importation is just another form of free trade and a "beneficial outcome of changing technology, free trade, and globalization. Free trade benefits everyone, and governments ought not cave in to special pleading by interest groups seeking to avoid competition or limit consumer choice."(Bast, 2004) Opponents counter that Canadian drugs are not as safe as U.S. drugs, and patients are putting themselves at risk. (Colabrese, 2000) Moreover, as these pharmacies often have dubiously legal status, the patients are in effect smuggling, or drug trafficking, even if the substances are to promote health, rather than provide a high.

The administration has recently begun to bow to public pressure. In response to public outcry, "owing to public and political pressure, the Department of Homeland Security agreed this week to stop confiscating the prescription drugs Americans order by mail from Canadian pharmacies." (Basler, 2006) Congress approved a measure that would permit individuals visiting Canada to bring home up to a ninety supply of prescription medicines for their own use. Sponsors of the bill plan to push for a more comprehensive measure that would also legalize mail-order purchases. (Basler, 2006) Even if one believes that the drugs may not be as safe as U.S. drugs, surely the patients have a right to take a relatively small risk, state advocates of this policy. (Bast, 2005)