Les Jones

Health Care > A Note on Re-importation of Canadian Drugs

Megan McCardle dismissed the argument that drugs shouldn't be re-imported from Canada because they might not be safe, but she now has second thoughts:

But according to this WSJ piece (subscription required), I may have been wrong . . . not because Canadian drugs are substandard third-world counterfeits, but because many of the drugs being represented as "Canadian" are coming from somewhere else:

The agency looked at packages suspected of containing pharmaceuticals sent from India, Israel, Costa Rica and Vanuatu -- four countries the FDA said appeared to be sources of drugs that were ordered from pharmacies alleged to be Canadian in origin.

Out of nearly 4,000 parcels examined, almost 1,700, or 43%, had been ordered from "Canadian" Internet pharmacies and were represented as being of Canadian origin. Of the 1,700 packages, 85% of the drugs weren't manufactured in Canada and came from 27 different countries.

"This operation suggests that drugs ordered from so-called Canadian Internet sites are not drugs of known safety and efficacy," Andrew von Eschenbach, the FDA's acting commissioner, said in a statement Friday. "These results make clear there are Internet sites that claim to be 'Canadian' that, in fact, are peddling drugs of dubious origin, safety and efficacy."