# The illegality of importing prescription drugs **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [October 17, 2005, 4:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-illegality-of-importing-prescription-drugs/326607 "2005-10-17T16:23:52Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 18\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Loopydude](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/e56c9b/32.png) [@Loopydude](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Loopydude)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2005, 12:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-illegality-of-importing-prescription-drugs/326607/21 "2005-10-18T00:44:15Z")
> [@Wesley Clark](#): > > But safety is not an issue in parallel trading for the EU, but safety is the reason given for why the US can’t engage in it. It is somewhat insulting for politicans and lawmakers to assume that the US can’t handle something that the Europeans can handle easily, that is like an American saying Europeans don’t know how to drive. Safety was never an issue anywhere. Anyone who insists on that is lying out their arse. The issue is money. You can get money in the US, but you can’t get much anywhere else. You let people import the drugs from the cheap zone, you lose money in the expensive zone, and your profits dry up. It’s very simple. It’s just drug companies can tell us, “Hey, American consumer, we’re forced to sell this drug for peanuts over there, but since your free markets let us charge you 'til it hurts we will! And we’d like to keep it that way!” Sure it’s insulting. It’s a specious argument. ---
**Author:** ![Wesley\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wesley_clark/32/20581_2.png) [@Wesley\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wesley_Clark)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2005, 12:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-illegality-of-importing-prescription-drugs/326607/22 "2005-10-18T00:44:38Z")
> [@Loopydude](#): > > The flip-side of this is, of course, that R&D budgets will be slashed and we’ll have to rely on state-run outfits for new drugs. That is, unless other countries agree to pay more. Which they won’t do. That’s a very different paradigm, and I’ve no idea how it would work. > > Really, the industry is probably pretty hosed in the long run. The growth is unsustainable because nobody can pay for it for long. Of course, as soon as people stop paying for it, there won’t be much money to do anything new. So they’ll keep churning out the old stuff, which will be fine, but you won’t see many new medicines each cycle, especially mass-market type remedies like painkillers. That’s probably a moribund market even now, given the Vioxx fiasco. > > I look at the situation, and wish I could see a good solution, but there’s just little to be done about the reality of increasing longevity and the insatiable desire for new and better treatments for what ails us, the latter feeding voraciously on the former. Hopefully I’ll have something to do with myself in fifteen or twenty years, or maybe biotech will somehow weather socialization. I kinda doubt it, though. Good thing I’m not paying a big mortgage! With the housing market people just found ways to pay. With health insurance people are finding ways to pay. I assume it’d be the same with pharmaceuticals. As far as R&D it was [$30.6 billion in the US](http://www.phrma.org/mediaroom/press/releases/18.02.2005.1128.cfm) in 2004. Not a small piece of change but again when you realize that 75% of the drugs are just pre-existing drugs or drugs we already have in one form or another it isn’t that great. That website shows that R&D spending in the US was 4-5x as much as in places like Europe, but I have heard (don’t know how true it is) is the reason for that is just because US government research is better so a US based R&D company would fare better than an England based company. ---
**Author:** ![Loopydude](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/e56c9b/32.png) [@Loopydude](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Loopydude)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2005, 12:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-illegality-of-importing-prescription-drugs/326607/23 "2005-10-18T00:45:26Z")
sorry, “drug companies **can’t** tell us…” ---
**Author:** ![Wesley\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wesley_clark/32/20581_2.png) [@Wesley\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wesley_Clark)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2005, 12:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-illegality-of-importing-prescription-drugs/326607/24 "2005-10-18T00:46:21Z")
> [@Loopydude](#): > > Safety was never an issue anywhere. Anyone who insists on that is lying out their arse. The issue is money. You can get money in the US, but you can’t get much anywhere else. You let people import the drugs from the cheap zone, you lose money in the expensive zone, and your profits dry up. It’s very simple. It’s just drug companies can tell us, “Hey, American consumer, we’re forced to sell this drug for peanuts over there, but since your free markets let us charge you 'til it hurts we will! And we’d like to keep it that way!” > > Sure it’s insulting. It’s a specious argument. Pretty much. The problem with the safety issue is not only that it is insulting (other developed countries are capable of it but we aren’t) but that it is too easy of a problem to fix to be the legitimate reason. Just have the FDA approve of a handful of overseas pharmacies and send in inspectors. It would be cheap and effective. ---
**Author:** ![Loopydude](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/e56c9b/32.png) [@Loopydude](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Loopydude)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2005, 12:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-illegality-of-importing-prescription-drugs/326607/25 "2005-10-18T00:47:20Z")
> [@Wesley Clark](#): > > That website shows that R&D spending in the US was 4-5x as much as in places like Europe, but I have heard (don’t know how true it is) is the reason for that is just because US government research is better so a US based R&D company would fare better than an England based company. Well, it’s partly that, but the investment dollars are just so much greater here than elsewhere. It’s not like a smart Harvard professor can’t go start his own venture in Germany if he feels like it. It’s just, why would he want to? ---
**Author:** ![Loopydude](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/e56c9b/32.png) [@Loopydude](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Loopydude)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2005, 12:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-illegality-of-importing-prescription-drugs/326607/26 "2005-10-18T00:48:46Z")
Actually, I think if the industry moves anywhere, it’ll be China, Korea, India. Europe’s stagnant. Asia is booming. Lots of investment money is flowing there. So that’s where the business will be. ---
**Author:** ![Loopydude](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/e56c9b/32.png) [@Loopydude](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Loopydude)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2005, 12:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-illegality-of-importing-prescription-drugs/326607/27 "2005-10-18T00:59:36Z")
> [@lorinada](#): > > Does “the market” really come into play when most Americans only pay a fraction of their healthcare costs, the rest being paid by a third party? How do you figure we only pay a fraction of our healthcare costs? Do you know how big our paycheck would be if your employer didn’t provide insurance? Or, if your employer doesn’t provide insurance, what are you paying each month? We pay _plenty_, for everything. Not just drugs, _everything_. Everybody in American healthcare is cashing in with both fists on sick people, and the American consumer most certainly pays a great deal for a very lucrative market. Nowhere in the world do doctors and even nurses make as much as they do here. Nobody pays for drugs and medical supplies like we do. All that equipment, everything, _we’re_ paying for it like no one else in the world. We’re wealthy, so we can mostly handle it, for now at least, but the idea we only pay a fraction for it is like saying we only pay a fraction of the cost when we total our car. We more than paid for it over the life of that car in insurance fees. ---
**Author:** ![jshore](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/b5e925/32.png) [@jshore](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jshore)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2005, 1:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-illegality-of-importing-prescription-drugs/326607/28 "2005-10-18T01:28:23Z")
There was a bit of a hullabaloo last year when Dr. Peter Rost, Vice President of Marketing at Pfizer started [saying](http://www.kaisernetwork.org/daily_reports/rep_hpolicy_recent_rep.cfm?dr_DateTime=22-Dec-04&show=yes) that he believes drug importation is (or can be) perfectly safe: > [@](#): > > Peter Rost, vice president of marketing at Pfizer and “the first” pharmaceutical industry executive to say publicly that reimportation “can be safe, rejected the administration’s arguments about minimal cost savings,” the Free Press reports. He said, “If importation didn’t work, you wouldn’t have had it in Europe for 20 years. This is so wrong” (Detroit Free Press, 12/22). I don’t know at this point if [he still has his job](http://www.americanprogressaction.org/site/pp.asp?c=klLWJcP7H&b=201360): > [@](#): > > MEDICARE – PFIZER EXECUTIVE INVESTIGATED AFTER ENDORSING IMPORTATION: Apparently, telling the truth about drug importation is a risky move. A drug company executive who endorsed a local plan to import drugs from Canada “said yesterday that his company has launched an investigation into his political activities. Peter Rost, vice president of marketing for Pfizer Inc., said the company has hired a New York law firm to find out what elected officials and media organizations he has spoken with in the past month.” Rost was one of the first drug industry executives to come out in support of reimporting drugs from Canada, a practice the Bush administration opposes, despite not being able to “name a single American who has been injured or killed by drugs bought from licensed Canadian pharmacies.” Pfizer’s political action committee has contributed $525,700 to Congressional Republicans in the 2004 election cycle. ---
**Author:** ![jshore](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/b5e925/32.png) [@jshore](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jshore)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2005, 1:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-illegality-of-importing-prescription-drugs/326607/29 "2005-10-18T01:35:41Z")
**Loopydude** : I think **Lorinada** ’s point is not that the costs aren’t paid for by all of us somehow but that they are largely externalized…which would tend to cause people to overuse the products and services (just like the fact that gas prices don’t reflect the environmental costs and the costs of invading Iraq causes us to be wasteful in our use of gasoline). And, this is no doubt true to some extent, although I think it can be a bit exaggerated…e.g., I don’t think that people are going to rush out to get colonoscopies all because they can get one without paying very much for it. 😉 ---
**Author:** ![Wesley\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wesley_clark/32/20581_2.png) [@Wesley\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wesley_Clark)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2005, 2:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-illegality-of-importing-prescription-drugs/326607/30 "2005-10-18T02:03:15Z")
> [@Loopydude](#): > > Actually, I think if the industry moves anywhere, it’ll be China, Korea, India. Europe’s stagnant. Asia is booming. Lots of investment money is flowing there. So that’s where the business will be. Labor is dirt cheap too and countries like that will probably throw government money at the subject because they know their market will be developed first world countries so there could be a high profit margin. I think a PhD chemist in China earns about what a McDonalds employee in the US earns. At least that is the impression that I get from the Chinese PhD student I work with in the lab. ---
**Author:** ![Muffin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/muffin/32/4341_2.png) [@Muffin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Muffin)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2005, 2:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-illegality-of-importing-prescription-drugs/326607/31 "2005-10-18T02:46:52Z")
Canada controls the price of prescripiton drugs. If we export to the USA in any significant quantity, the drug companies will restrict sales to Canada. That will mean a shortage of drugs in Canada. To avoid this, the Canadian government will prevent significant drug exports to the USA. Quite simply, Canada will not put its presription drug supply at risk simply because the USA has failed to get its health care system in order. According to our Federal Minister of Health: “The Government of Canada is committed to protecting Canada’s drug supply by strengthening its capacity to prohibit the export of Canadian drugs if and when necessary.” [http://news.gc.ca/cfmx/view/en/index.jsp?articleid=157789](http://news.gc.ca/cfmx/view/en/index.jsp?articleid=157789) ---
**Author:** ![Martin\_Hyde](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/47e85d/32.png) [@Martin\_Hyde](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Martin_Hyde)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2005, 5:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-illegality-of-importing-prescription-drugs/326607/32 "2005-10-18T05:15:26Z")
There’s only two problems I see with this is. 1. I think it undermines the position of the pharmacist. Pharmacists are expected to be professionals who offer a form of medical service to their customers by making sure they aren’t taking a lethal cocktail of drugs (and since most people go to multiple doctors but only one pharmacy/pharmacist a pharmacist has the best chance of catching this.) Pharmacists also tend to be the ones who will be the most likely to give information that their customers can use on any given drug. 2. I do think there are worries about completely irreputable types setting up “internet pharmacies” and selling pretty much whatever they want as prescription medication. While I think most informed people would never be taken in by this, a lot of older people trying to order prescription drugs on the internet could probably easily fall prey to this type of thing. ---
**Author:** ![Barbarian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/e19adc/32.png) [@Barbarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Barbarian)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2005, 1:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-illegality-of-importing-prescription-drugs/326607/33 "2005-10-18T13:55:10Z")
Down the road from where I grew up in Montreal are research and production plants for Merck, Pfizer, and a bunch of other drug companies. Biotech firms have research labs around the world, so the idea that the U.S. gov’t and/or public is funding all research is somewhat specious. I just spent a week hanging around the Hep C conference in Montreal, and chatted with people who used to work for Big Pharma. They just left because in the past decade the _marketing_ department has become the be-all and end-all of the company. The marketers dictate too much of the research (ie. we need another painkiller, we need a baldness treatment, etc…) and the scientists aren’t allowed to continue pursuing their own topics-- like figuring out how to improve animal testing so drugs wouldn’t be rejected at the human trial stage. Knowing people who have worked on the marketing side, who were responsible for convincing doctors to prescribe their hot new drug, I can tell you they’ve got blank cheques for anything they want to do, like dinners, fine wine, box seats to a sports game. But a lab worker who wants to order some hundred-dollar tests? She’s got to jump through hoops justifying the expense. That’s why Americans can’t import drugs from Canada-- it’d be cutting out the middleman who are a complete drain on society and convince your doctor to buy a new drug that costs more money and is less effective than a now-generic developed 30 years ago. ---
**Author:** ![redtail23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/3e96dc/32.png) [@redtail23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/redtail23)\ **Post date:** [October 19, 2005, 9:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-illegality-of-importing-prescription-drugs/326607/34 "2005-10-19T21:31:34Z")
> [@Loopydude](#): > > So, realistically, if imports of drugs from Canada can continue unchecked, and this becomes a very popular thing to do, something will have to give. What, I don’t know. My guess is Big Pharma will seek to exert their considerable influence on Canadian politics in a manner unheard of up there but _de rigeur_ down here. If Canadian imports can flow unhindered and in large quantities, that means Pharma has lost the battle down here. They’ll take it elsewhere, simple as that. The pharmaceutical companies have already threatened Canada with cutting off their supply if they export to the US. Once they do that, Canada will take steps to cut off the export trade and the problem will move back down here. ---
**Author:** ![Loopydude](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/e56c9b/32.png) [@Loopydude](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Loopydude)\ **Post date:** [October 19, 2005, 11:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-illegality-of-importing-prescription-drugs/326607/35 "2005-10-19T23:47:51Z")
> [@Barbarian](#): > > Knowing people who have worked on the marketing side, who were responsible for convincing doctors to prescribe their hot new drug, I can tell you they’ve got blank cheques for anything they want to do, like dinners, fine wine, box seats to a sports game. But a lab worker who wants to order some hundred-dollar tests? She’s got to jump through hoops justifying the expense. Henh? I don’t work in a Big Pharma Co., admittedly, but I do know a couple people who do research for Novartis, and they certainly don’t have to beg to spend boatloads of money on experiments. A few hundred dollars is a piddling amount for lab supplies these days, so the idea you would have to jump through hoops to do work on that scale is, quite frankly, ludicrous. You’d never hit the ground, you’d be jumping so much. He and she are very smart folks, and the work they do is top notch. The story I keep hearing is, if anything, life is much easier and just as rewarding as it was for them in academia, largely because they don’t have to jump through all the usual hoops to chase grants. In that regard, their experience really isn’t any different than mine, they just do everything on a much bigger scale. I don’t know who you were speaking to, but they sound like they’re full of shit, at least on the research side of things. ---
**Author:** ![Loopydude](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/e56c9b/32.png) [@Loopydude](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Loopydude)\ **Post date:** [October 19, 2005, 11:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-illegality-of-importing-prescription-drugs/326607/36 "2005-10-19T23:51:54Z")
> [@Barbarian](#): > > Down the road from where I grew up in Montreal are research and production plants for Merck, Pfizer, and a bunch of other drug companies. Biotech firms have research labs around the world, so the idea that the U.S. gov’t and/or public is funding all research is somewhat specious. Of course they’re not doing all of it. Just a huge proportion of it. ---
**Author:** ![Barbarian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/e19adc/32.png) [@Barbarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Barbarian)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2005, 2:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-illegality-of-importing-prescription-drugs/326607/37 "2005-10-21T02:25:07Z")
No shit at all **loopydude**. It sounds absolutely horrible, but these people jumped ship after at least 15 years with the same company because they, and just about every other Principal Investigator, had lost most of the control over their projects. Trust me, I know how pathetic it sounds-- my wife is doing a post-doc, and could easily spend thousands a week without even trying-- but they thought that the industrial model of ‘no looking for grants’ has vanished from at least one Big Pharma firm. ---
**Author:** ![Fear\_Itself](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fear_itself/32/19637_2.png) [@Fear\_Itself](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fear_Itself)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2005, 2:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-illegality-of-importing-prescription-drugs/326607/38 "2005-10-21T02:57:52Z")
> [@A.R. Cane](#): > > In the beginning it was probably safe enough, but the con artists have gotten involved > and there’s now the danger of receiving counterfeit pill bottles w/ counterfeit placebos > inside, if not worse. We hardly have to import drugs from Canada to risk getting counterfeits. [The FDA says counterfeit drugs made right here in America are a growing threat to public health](http://www.fda.gov/oc/initiatives/counterfeit/report02_04.html): > [@](#): > > FDA counterfeit drug investigations have increased to over 20 per year since 2000, after averaging only 5 per year through the late 1990’s. (See Figure 1 – Chart of FDA investigations) Increasingly, these investigations have involved well-organized criminal operations that seek to introduce finished drug products that may closely resemble legitimate drugs yet may contain only inactive ingredients, incorrect ingredients, improper dosages, sub-potent or super-potent ingredients, or be contaminated. Thus, drug counterfeiting poses real public health and safety concerns today, and may pose an even greater threat in the future if we fail to take preventative measures now. As counterfeiters continue to seek out new technologies to make deceptive products and introduce them into legitimate commerce, our systems for protecting patients must respond effectively. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-illegality-of-importing-prescription-drugs/326607.md?page=1)