New medications bring some Canadians south

The cross-border trade in pharmaceutical drugs isn’t entirely Americans buying from Canada. Frequently, new medications hit the U.S. market before they’re available north of the border. And some Canadians won’t wait.

Just ask Dick Larson, who’s been a pharmacist in Oroville, Wash., for 28 years. Canadians from Kelowna and Penticton, B.C., frequent his Oroville Pharmacy.

They make up a small but important part of his business.

“Viagra was available here a year and a half before it was available in Canada,” he said. “Cialis (another impotence drug) is now available here and not in Canada.”

He named several other drugs, including two muscle relaxants and a drug for attention deficit disorder, that draw Canadians across the border to shop in his store. The delays on releases of new drugs for Canadians, he said, are a trade-off: Canadians benefit from the pharmaceutical research subsidized by Americans in higher prices and government research grants.

“Without our technology, they’d be stuck,” he said.

Drug companies aren’t in a hurry to release their products at prices controlled by the Canadian government, especially now with more Americans buying from Canadian Internet pharmacies, said Greg Skura, chairman of the Pharmacy Alliance for Canadians.

“They’re not going to release it to Canada if there’s a chance it can come into the United States through the back door,” said Skura, a pharmacist in Brandon, Manitoba.

Skura said longer delays in new drug releases in Canada started about one year ago. His group is an alliance of pharmacists concerned about the impact of cross-border trade on the Canadian marketplace.

Delays hurt people like Kelly-Ann Butterworth, a 33-year-old Canadian diabetic. She has been buying an injectable insulin called Lantus in the United States for about two years. Lantus is not yet available in Canada, although it was approved in Canada two years ago, and drug maker Aventis Pharmaceuticals received a price in March from Canada’s Patented Medicine Prices Review Board, the government agency that sets prices for Canadian drugs.

Lantus is more predictable than other insulins and, for Butterworth, eliminates surprise bouts of low energy and memory blackouts she has experienced on other insulins.

So twice a year, she drives two hours from Kelowna, B.C., to Larson’s Oroville Pharmacy.

She buys a six-month supply, four bottles for about $244. Once she tried ordering on the Internet from another U.S. pharmacy. The temperature- sensitive product arrived in a puddle of water that once was ice.

Despite being unable to get the insulin she prefers in Canada, Butterworth, an office manager for an architecture firm, said she would not want to get her health care in the United States.

“I appreciate how lucky we are here,” she said. “I wouldn’t move down to the States, just because I know diabetes has complications. Although there are problems (with Canada’s health care), I think it’s a pretty good system all around.”