We asked the question for you | Should we fear that our medicines will go to Florida?

“Florida will be able to purchase and import prescription drugs from Canada. »

The New Year’s sparkling wine had barely finished when the media gave us these headlines, reporting the “concerns” that this raises.

Misery ! I said to myself. We’re used to it when migratory birds and sun seekers leave for Fort Lauderdale. But our precious medicines? Those who make it possible to treat Canadians?

Drug shortages already causing headaches for Canadian patients^⁠1. The last thing we need is for American states to take us for a big Jean Coutu and come and dig into our reserves of pills.

Faced with this crucial issue, I wanted to understand the extent of the threat. I immediately sell the punch: at the end of my research, I admit to being quite reassured. We will have to remain vigilant, but it seems that the affair is mainly a matter of American political bluster.

Let’s first summarize the situation.

If we find (rightly) that medicines are expensive in Canada, that has nothing in common with what happens in the United States. There, policies favorable to pharmaceutical companies have propelled prices of brand-name drugs into the stratosphere.

According to the Patented Medicine Prices Review Board, these drugs sell for 3.5 times more in the United States than in Canada. It is not new that American politicians have promised their citizens to act to bring them down. And for that, they often look north of the border. In 2019, Senator Bernie Sanders filled a bus with diabetic patients to take them to Canada to get a cheaper supply of insulin.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is as far to the right as Bernie Sanders is to the left. But he took up the same fight again and has just won a first concrete victory in this matter.

He managed to convince the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the American equivalent of Health Canada, to authorize the importation of drugs from Canada. In a decision dated January 5, the federal agency says such imports are safe and in the interests of Americans.

Other states, including Colorado, Texas, New Hampshire, Maine and Vermont, have similar plans and will likely jump into the breach.

The question is whether this legal victory will be transformed into concrete gains. In short, if drugs will really leave Canada to end up in American pharmacies. Nothing is less sure.

The first obstacle that stands in the way of importers is the pharmaceutical companies themselves. They are perfectly fine with the high prices in the United States and are unhappy with the FDA’s decision. These multinationals have subsidiaries on each side of the border and will do nothing to facilitate the export of medicines. On the contrary, they could even legally challenge the decision.

The other unhappy person in this is obviously Canada. Seeing Americans salivating over our pills, the Trudeau government had banned, well before the January 5 decision, any sale of drugs abroad likely to “cause or aggravate a drug shortage in Canada.”

This is another strong safeguard.

Hugues Mousseau is president of the Quebec Association of Pharmacy Distributors, which supplies medications to pharmacies and hospitals in Quebec. It is clear: there is no question of its members starting to direct drugs to the United States.

Legally, he said, they couldn’t even do it.

“It is more of a political decision which does not surprise me. The United States is in an election period, we must not forget that,” said Pierre-Marc Gervais, pharmacist and vice-president at Axxess International, a company specializing in international transport and customs brokerage, in a article published by the magazine Health profession.

Question resolved? It looks like it. But with the price of drugs being so much higher in the United States, someone who manages to export them south of the border could make big profits. It is not impossible that some people will try it.

Joelle Walker, vice-president of public affairs at the Canadian Pharmacists Association, urges vigilance.

“There is no immediate threat in Canada, Canadians do not have to rush to the pharmacy to refill their prescription,” she said. But we will have to monitor whether there are loopholes in our regulations that are likely to be exploited. »

The FDA’s decision allows the state of Florida to import drugs only for public drug programs like Medicaid. But^me Walker highlights a risk: that this decision will be misunderstood by certain Americans, who conclude that they can personally obtain supplies from Canada.

This was seen as recently as last year when Ozempic, a diabetes drug increasingly used for weight loss, found itself in global shortage. Americans then massively ordered Ozempic online from pharmacies in British Columbia, forcing provincial authorities to regulate to protect the local supply.

You should know that reciprocity agreements exist to recognize prescriptions between Canada and the United States (in the case of Quebec, these agreements are only established with certain states).

“Even if a small portion of Americans started doing this, it could cause us problems,” Joelle Walker rightly points out.

The watchword, therefore: let’s not panic, but let’s stay alert.