Navigation

Arizona Board Of Pharmacy

PARK RIDGE, Ill.--The United States' National Association of Boards of Pharmacy and Canada's National Association of Pharmacy Regulatory Authorities--the associations representing pharmacy regulators in each respective country--last month denounced the practice of cross-border pharmacy and agreed to work together "to protect the citizens each are mandated to serve" in actively promoting pharmacy regulations in their respective countries.

Although in neither case does the associations' decree carry the weight of law, it certainly provides a glimpse into the thinking of pharmacy regulators from both sides of the border. Simply put, Canadian pharmacy operators serving American constituents, as well as the U.S.-based "storefront" operations that facilitate that trade for a fee, are being put on warning to halt operations. In the United States, the practice is out-and-out illegal; in Canada, it "raises legal, ethical and public policy issues," reads the joint statement.

"The communique reaffirmed the strong partnership we have with Carmen Catizone, NABP executive director, told Drug Store News. "The next step is for the industry groups [NACDS, APhA, CPhA] to support that relationship and get the word out to the public and the legislatures that this importation of Canadian medication is dangerous."

"We each have different issues around the cross-border [pharmacy trade]," added Barbara Wells, NAPRA's executive director. "There are no Canadian laws that prohibit exporting the prescriptions, but we have other issues," she said. For instance, regarding regulatory accountability, at what point is pharmacy practiced? At the point of dispensing a medication, in this case in Canada, or at the point of medicine delivery, which would be in the United States?

One benefit of the communique may be to drive debate in Canada. "We have a whole range of opinions, that vary province to province about what is appropriate and what is not. We need to get a national consensus on that," Wells said. "Our members [NABP and NAPRA] on both sides of the border are looking for clarification," she added.

The National Association of Chain Drug Stores, as well as both the American Pharmacists Association and the Canadian Pharmacists Association, commended the agreement. "Canadian pharmacists support the Joint commitment of NAPRA and NABP to address this illegal practice by encouraging enforcement to ensure patient safety," stated Jeff Poston, CPhA executive director. "Safe and effective medication management by pharmacists is enormously compromised when prescription drugs are treated as just another retail commodity, as opposed to the powerful medications they are."

The reasons behind each associations' opposition to the cross-border trade differ. U.S. regulators are concerned about assigning pharmaceutical safety liability to pharmacists who fall outside their jurisdiction or protecting American consumers from medicines that are free from any government oversight. Canadian regulators worry that the American demand for medicines from Canadian pharmacies may place too great a tax on its price-controlled Canadian health care system, to the point that it detracts from the care provided Canadian citizens.

The public communication is only the first step. From here, NABP and NAPRA, along with the support of like-minded associations such as NACDS, APhA and CPhA, hope to lobby U.S. lawmakers either to enforce the laws already on the books or to write new legislation banning the cross-border pharmaceutical trade.

Indeed, already in the pharmaceutical belt of New Jersey, state legislation was introduced May 22 to ban the practice of importing drugs from outside the United States.

The Arizona State Board of Pharmacy last month publicly urged the Arizona Better Business Bureau to warn consumers against importing medicines from Canada, citing the recent criminal conviction and pending sentencing of Rory Dannenberg, operator of Value Prescriptions--a facilitator of the Canadian medicine import business. He was convicted on fraud charges unrelated to his pharmacy facilitation operation.

And the West Virginia Board of Pharmacy recently issued a pair of cease and desist orders to two "storefront" operators for soliciting prescriptions and then filling those prescriptions outside the United States.

COPYRIGHT 2003 Reproduced with permission of the copyright holder. Further reproduction or distribution is prohibited without permission.
COPYRIGHT 2003 Gale Group