The New Drug Smugglers (7/6/2004)

From two recent stories, we've learned that seniors and their families are now reduced to becoming drug smugglers. Bill Hogan, in his article "Bus Stop" in the June AARP Bulletin described a seniors' bus trip to Canada to buy their prescriptions. Julia Whitty, in an article entitled 'smuggling Hope" in the April issue of Mother Jones, wrote about the desperate steps she took to get prescription drugs to slow her father's cancer.

Hogan's compelling story is about the hundreds of desperate seniors who travel for days to purchase cheaper drugs in Canada. Last October, when a Minnesota Senior Federation's bus crossed back over the border, they were stopped by U.S. Customs and boarded by FDA agents who, as one senior said, "came on the bus like Gestapo agents." The agents wore black uniforms, were very stern, and looked through everyone's purchases. Another senior said the search was "orchestrated to scare" us. But these senior drug smugglers are going back to Canada, where, as one woman pointed out, she can get her cancer drug for 45 cents per pill versus $4 per pill in the U.S.

Whitty's story began with her father calling her to say that a new prescription from his oncologist, and his last and only line of defense in his two-year battle against cancer, was beyond his reach financially. Unable to afford the new drug, he had to lose hope and prepare to die. Whitty knew that her father's death from this particular disease would be "one of the worst possible deaths." She states that if there were any way to spare his suffering, she would do it. Her choices were bankruptcy (despite his having health insurance), breaking the law, or forgoing her father's lifesaving treatments. She became a lawbreaker. She started with an Internet search and found people who would pass along the remnants of the needed prescription from their deceased families or friends.

Whitty eventually found an overseas pharmaceutical company that made the same drug her father needed for about $1,200 a year-- vastly cheaper than the $47,000 a year the American company charged. However, our government forbids import of prescription drugs, so Whitty had to become a drug smuggler. Using her personal contacts overseas, she found a doctor in the country that manufactured the drug, got the prescription filled at a pharmacy there, and brought it home. Worried about going through U.S. customs, she used various tactics to get through security. She even used non-American friends as coyotes to smuggle refills.

Later she learned that she might be able to import the drug quasi-legally. Optimistically, she began the paperwork to make that happen. But as time went by and her father's prescription ran out, she became desperate. U.S. Customs said the prescription package was being held because the Food and Drug Administration was not convinced of the import's legality or of her father's need for the drug. This FDA ruling came despite medical reports showing the drug was helping her father.

Whitty points out that although the FDA likes to cite dangers of buying drugs overseas, buying from American pharmacies is risky too. She lists several cases of counterfeit drugs and diluted prescriptions here in the United States. She asks why the new Medicare law forbids importing U.S.-made drugs which are available more cheaply overseas; yet, she can go overseas and purchase wine or clothes for less, and American corporations can buy raw materials overseas for less and move their operations abroad to hire cheaper labor. Whitty's struggle to find loopholes and run the gauntlet of laws to obtain her father's prescriptions is a searing story of why, as she stated: "the drug pipeline won't close until affordable drugs come home."

Is our government more concerned with protecting seniors' health or with protecting pharmaceutical companies' profits? When the choice is between drug smuggling and slow, painful death, who can fault a senior's decision to break the law?

- Judith Kohler

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