Cost is the real drug threat

From the Los Angeles Times:
In his weekend radio address, President Bush warned of rogue pharmacists making potentially dangerous prescription drugs readily available online.

"The Internet has brought about tremendous benefits for those who cannot easily get to a pharmacy in person," Bush said. "However, it has also created an opportunity for unscrupulous doctors and pharmacists to profit from addiction."

That's undoubtedly true, as are most observations that the Internet has become a hotbed of fraud and flimflammery. And I think we can all agree that patients should see doctors face to face, rather than via an online chat or survey, before receiving prescriptions for painkillers and other such meds.

But Dr. Bush is addressing a symptom and not the cause of one of the country's top medical problems. ...more

CanaRx president says Canadian drugs shortage unlikely

From the Windsor (Ont.) Star:
Fears of a prescription drug shortage in Canada are rising now that it's all but certain the next U.S. president will allow Americans to import cheaper Canadian drugs.

But a Windsorite whose company sells prescription drugs to Americans, and inspired a Simpsons episode for it, says the fears are all hype.

"Making it easier to import international medications would not have a significant impact to Canada at all, or its supply," said Tony Howard, president of CanaRx. "What the three candidates are doing will not jeopardize Canada's supply at all."

It's illegal in the U.S. for Americans to import prescription drugs from other countries, and President George Bush has opposed changing that.

But all three major U.S. presidential candidates -- Democratic rivals Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton and Republican John McCain -- have said they'd allow it. ...more

Bush urges new rules on online sales of addictive prescription drugs

From the Los Angeles Times:
President Bush called on Congress on Saturday to pass legislation restricting online sales of powerfully addictive prescription drugs, citing a growing number of overdoses.

Bush referred to San Diego teenager Ryan Haight as he unveiled the 2008 national drug control strategy in his weekly radio address. Haight overdosed on painkillers he bought over the Internet, prompting Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) to introduce the bill that Bush championed Saturday.

The president said his national drug policy had reduced youth drug consumption by 24% since 2001. That progress has been counterbalanced by the growing problem of prescription drug abuse.

"Unfortunately, many young Americans do not understand how dangerous abusing medication can be," Bush said. "In recent years, the number of Americans who have died from prescription drug overdoses has increased." ...more

Mexico pharmacies targeted

You can tell it's an election year in the United States. Over the last year, very little was heard about states working with foreign pharmacies. Now we are starting to hear about Canadian pharmacies again. The article below is the first mention I've seen of a state wanting to work with Mexican pharmacies.

From the (Phoenix) Arizona Republic:
Several states have direct links to Canadian pharmacies to ensure their citizens have access to less expensive prescription drugs.

Yet no state has such formal ties through Web sites or state-sponsored programs to pharmacies in Mexico.

But residents of Arizona and other Southwestern states routinely visit border towns such as Los Algodones near Yuma to buy prescription drugs at large pharmacies catering to tourists.

Now, Gov. Janet Napolitano and her counterparts on both sides of the U.S.-Mexican border have floated an idea that would scrutinize the safety of prescription drugs sold in Mexican border towns. They want to create a cross-border testing and inspection program to ensure drug safety.

Napolitano has initiated talks with Bush administration officials on what it would take to launch such a pilot program with cooperation on both sides of the border. ...more

City offers voluntary plan for imported prescription drugs

I didn't realize that cities and states were trying to set up deals with Canadian pharmacies anymore. Duluth seems to be a bit behind the curve on this issue.

From the Duluth (Minn.) News Tribune:
Beginning Monday, city of Duluth employees, dependents and retirees will have a new option for buying brand-name prescription drugs — with the potential of large cost savings for themselves and taxpayers.

Under the voluntary plan, the Canadian firm CanaRx will deliver imported drugs packaged by the original manufacturer directly to people who ordered them. The plan was announced Thursday morning at a City Hall news conference. ...more

Dozens of drug Web sites falsely claiming certification by professional groups

From the South Florida Sun-Sentinel:
The Better Business Bureau and other professional groups are complaining to federal regulators that some Internet pharmacies are falsely claiming they are certified by their organizations, leaving dissatisfied consumers with nowhere to turn.

Most customers said they never received medications they ordered or got drugs that appeared questionable.

The certifying groups learned of the misrepresentations — by dozens of Web sites — when online drug shoppers called to complain about sites they assumed had been approved or were members of the organization. "The numbers just started to add up. These sites are ripping people off," said Gabriel Levitt, vice president of PharmacyChecker.com, whose company certifies 228 Internet pharmacies and offers a Web-based price-comparison tool. Levitt said he had received about 100 complaints within the past 18 months about Web sites using fake PharmacyChecker seals and logos, apparently used to suggest a site's legitimacy. ...more

Free Trade Zones Ease Passage of Counterfeit Drugs

From the New York Times:
Along a seemingly endless row of identical gray warehouses, a lone guard stands watch over a shuttered storage area with a peeling green and yellow sign: Euro Gulf Trading.

Three months ago, when the authorities announced that they had seized a large cache of counterfeit drugs from Euro Gulf’s warehouse deep inside a sprawling free trade zone here, they gave no hint of the raid’s global significance.

But an examination of the case reveals its link to a complex supply chain of fake drugs that ran from China through Hong Kong, the United Arab Emirates, Britain and the Bahamas, ultimately leading to an Internet pharmacy whose American customers believed they were buying medicine from Canada, according to interviews with regulators and drug company investigators in six countries.

The seizure highlights how counterfeit drugs move in a global economy, and why they are so difficult to trace. And it underscores the role played by free trade zones — areas specially designated by a growing number of countries to encourage trade, where tariffs are waived and there is minimal regulatory oversight. ...more

Canadian drug-benefits provider sues WISH-TV

From the Indianapolis Star:
Canadian pharmacy benefit manager CanaRx Services, which is trying to expand its business in Indiana, sued the parent company of WISH-TV (Channel 8) on Monday, alleging defamation over a broadcast linking CanaRx to sales of counterfeit drugs.

The Windsor-based company sent its president, chief pharmacist and two attorneys to Indianapolis to announce the lawsuit and demand a retraction of statements made in the Nov. 2 broadcast.

The eight-page lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court, charges that reports in the broadcast were "false, defamatory and constituted commercial disparagement of CanaRx and its business." ...more

Canadian drug sales slow

From the Philadelphia Inquirer:
Ann Griffith doesn't fit the stereotype of a criminal.

At 81, the Plymouth Meeting resident has been buying the thyroid medication Synthroid for three years from a Canadian Internet pharmacy. She shaved 40 percent off the U.S. price.

But from July to September, the Food and Drug Administration detained three of her packages at the Seattle-Tacoma airport. Agency letters stopped short of accusing her of breaking the law but required her to write or travel personally to Washington state to prove that the packages were legal.

"These laws are designed to protect you," one letter said.

Griffith, who said she never had any health problems with Canadian drugs, scoffed at the agency's actions. "The big drug companies don't want to lose anything," she said. "That's the whole thing."

Canadian drug sales to U.S. patients like Griffith were once a hot trend. But a variety of factors have stifled this continental trade, making it more like curling than hockey. Drug firms such as Pfizer Inc. and GlaxoSmithKline P.L.C. have threatened to cut off supplies to Canadian pharmacies catering to the U.S. market. ...more

No prescription, no problem

From the Globe and Mail:
Ever wonder what would happen if you actually opened that e-mail titled "Vi@GRa, LeVitr@ with the LOWEST prices!" and ordered up some pills?

Researchers at the University of Toronto-based Centre for Global eHealth Innovation recently took on the task, sifting through more than 4,000 spam e-mails and placing 27 orders in an attempt to gauge how easy it is for Canadians to buy prescription drugs online.

The study leaders, Alejandro Jadad and Peter Gernburd, received one product for every three orders they placed.

"We were very surprised to find you could get so much from these spammers. Canadians have to be wary of this," Dr. Jadad said.

The study was published yesterday in the online journal PLoS Medicine. ...more

Health Canada to crack down on fake pills

From the National Post:
A B.C. woman is fatally poisoned by counterfeit anxiety pills she ordered over the Internet, four Ontario patients die after apparently consuming fake -- and ineffective -- heart drugs, while Quebec vendors are spotted selling knock-off Viagra at a flea market.

The peddling of bogus pharmaceuticals is becoming such a worrisome problem that Health Canada has begun drafting a new anti-counterfeit strategy, expected to include beefed-up enforcement, stronger ties with police and a public-education campaign, a department official confirmed last week. The federal agency is also planning to hold a conference of interested parties to discuss the threat when the plan is released this fall.

For Health Canada officials used to dealing with a "generally compliant industry," counterfeiting represents a novel kind of health issue, said Paul Duchesne, a department spokesman. ...more

Internet drugs are blamed for woman's death

From the Vancouver Province:
Health Minister George Abbott is cautioning British Columbians about buying drugs from Internet pharmacies after a coroner determined a Quadra Island woman died from counterfeit drugs she bought online.

Coroner Kerry Clarke found that Marcia Bergeron, 58, died of cardiac arrhythmia due to acute metal poisoning.

Shortly before she died last December, Bergeron complained of nausea, diarrhea and aching joints.

She was losing her hair and having vision problems.

An autopsy discovered high levels of aluminum, phosphorous and many other metals in her body, and the coroner said they came from the pills she bought on the Internet.

Among the 100 pills found in Bergeron's home were sedatives, painkillers and anti-anxiety drugs.

They were bought from a pharmacy which billed itself as a Canadian pharmacy, but it wasn't. ...more

Pharmacist inks Internet drug deal

From the Vancouver Province:
A Surrey pharmacist has signed an exclusive deal with the Philippines government to sell prescription drugs in that nation on the Net.

Bob Rai is president of Pharma-Canada Inc., which he said signed the five-year deal in March and hopes to be operating early in August. "The federal government of the Philippines wants to reduce medication costs by about 50 per cent by the year 2010," Rai said yesterday.

He has business contacts in the Philippines after travelling there regularly for several years to facilitate his dealings in herbal medications and generic drugs. To reduce costs, government-run pharmacies have been set up to offer an alternative to the more expensive, private pharmacies. ...more

Canadian drug imports shrink in half from 2004

From the Detroit News:
The once-booming business of selling Canadian prescription drugs to Americans has shrunk in half since 2004-05 as the surging Canadian dollar and better U.S. government health insurance erode the price gap.

Annual sales have slipped below $500 million Canadian, down from nearly $1 billion Canadian in 2004, according to figures supplied by the Canadian International Pharmacy Association, which represents Internet and mail-order drugstores.

The figures include sales of drugs to Americans from third countries, mainly in Europe, but brokered by Canadian pharmacies. ...more

Reliability of drugs from Canada questioned

From the Trenton (NJ) Times:

Fred Billingham was waiting to shoot pool at the Hamilton Senior Center. Former U.S. Rep. Jim Greenwood was hundreds of miles away in Washington, D.C., but they were of like minds on one topic: Purchasing cheap medication from Canada scares them.

"I wouldn't trust them," said the 78-year-old retiree, "because you don't know what you're getting."

And Greenwood, a former Bucks County, Pa., legislator who now is president of the trade association the Biotechnology Industry Organization, said, "There is a very legitimate safety issue that has to be taken into consideration."

That safety concern is why state investigators make no apologies for the tactic they used last week to shut down a local company that helped American patients buy lower-cost medications from Canada. ...more

Company offering cheap prescription drugs faces probe

From the Vancouver Sun:
The College of Pharmacists of B.C. says it has launched an investigation into a Richmond company offering cheap prescription drugs online without being registered with the college.

The investigation will probe regulatory matters. There is no evidence that the Richmond company is in any way linked to the death of a Quadra Island woman who died after ingesting drugs she ordered online.

Under the college's guidelines, a B.C. pharmacy that sells drugs online must publish its name and address on its website -- along with the college's phone number, which people can call to verify the site is legitimate. ...more

MD: Online medical treatment 'frightening'

There are a few more details about the Marcia Bergeron in this article. Most notably, the names of the drugs she bought online were mentioned: alprazolam (brand name Xanax) and zolpidem (brand name Ambien in the U.S)

From the Vancouver Sun:
The Quadra Island woman who died after taking tainted pills she bought on the Internet became very sick in the weeks leading up to her death but never mentioned ordering drugs online, her best friend said yesterday.

"She complained that she felt like she had flu symptoms and diarrhea," said Glenda Billerbeck, who visited Marcia Bergeron at her home in the days before her death. "She said, 'My legs are kind of swollen up,' and she was tired."

Billerbeck said Bergeron, 57, suffered from several health problems, including a bad hip and severe allergies.

But she said her friend, whom she knew for more than 15 years, never mentioned ordering medicine online. ...more

Online drugs can prove deadly: coroner

This death is a sad example of "buyer beware." I'd like to think that it might dissuade a few people to buy pharmaceuticals online from questionable websites, but the fact is a lot of people want to circumvent the typical route of going to the physician and getting a prescription, especially when it comes to certain types of drugs. Hopefully, people will now be able to identify some of the characteristics of the worst sites.

It sounds like she was ordering painkillers and sedatives, including one that is not available in Canada due to a high risk of overdose. In a lot of ways, this case has similarities to buying Oxcontin on the shady street corner in your own town. You never really know what you're getting. The only difference is that she bought it online.

From Vancouver Sun:
A few days before she died just after Christmas, Marcia Bergeron started losing her hair and had blurred vision -- telling friends on Quadra Island that she feared she was coming down with the flu.

It was only later that those investigating her death discovered the truth: She had slowly been poisoned.

But this is no murder mystery.

The B.C. Coroners Service announced Tuesday that it believes Bergeron, 57, was poisoned by tainted pills she ordered online from a bogus Canadian pharmacy. ...more

Online drug loss hard pill to swallow

The numbers are now verifying what we already knew. Canadian online pharmacies had a tough year in 2006. I think anyone who has survived this long has likely found their niche and will continue in business. However, there is no real sign of growth in the industry. With the manufacturer restrictions solidly in place and Medicare Part D entering its second year, the only factor that could change is the exchange rate. A sinking Canadian dollar may be the only way these pharmacies will see leaps in sales.

From the Financial Post:
Dozens of Canadian Internet pharmacies have closed shop or laid off staff after sales at the country’s online drugstores plunged by nearly 50% last year.

A report released Wednesday by IMS Health, a company that tracks pharmaceutical sales, suggests Internet pharmacies sold only $211-million worth of prescriptions into the U.S. in 2006, a steep drop from sales of $420-million in 2005.

The declining revenues forced about 30 online drugstores — whose chief business was selling cheap Canadian medication to U.S. seniors — to close around the country, according to the Canadian International Pharmacy Association. ...more

Buying online drugs: Dos and Don'ts

From CTV News:
Health agencies and experts are providing advice to Canadians who are considering buying drugs over the Internet, with the issue launched back into the spotlight after the recent death of a B.C. woman who took a drug she purchased online.

The B.C. coroner says the 57-year-old Vancouver Island woman bought a sedative not legally sold in Canada, and which has been linked to overdose deaths in other countries. ...more