|
We get asked the following question often, “is buying drugs online from a Canadian pharmacy legal?”
Sometimes it’s posed in different ways like:
Well, we are not able to provide legal advice on our website but we have talked to several lawyers about this issue of whether it
is “legal” for Americans to buy drugs from Canada online. The following is our personal view on the matter.
First, if you were to visit Canada on a holiday and go into a pharmacy to buy your prescription drugs, it is highly unlikely that
U.S. Customs would take your medications or put you in jail while crossing back home because they somehow thought the drugs were not
legal. Perhaps this could happen if you were buying narcotic or controlled drugs for which there may be different legal implications.
But since NorthWestPharmacy.com does not sell any such medications, we will not discuss that issue here.
Why then do some say the FDA in the USA considers it “illegal” to buy Canadian prescription medications and drugs from a pharmacy in
Canada? Some lawyers argue, as does the FDA, that the importation of non-narcotic/non-controlled prescription drugs from Canada even
for personal use results in the Canadian drugs imported not being in technical compliance with the U.S. Food Drugs and Cosmetics Act.
In the rare cases when the FDA does not permit a U.S. patient’s Canadian prescriptions to cross the border by mail, they send a notice
to the patient which clearly states that the FDA does not in any manner accuse the patient of having violated the law but rather the
Canadian drug they are importing does not appear to comply with the law. It sounds kind of silly but it seems like they are saying
that drugs from Canada are illegal but importing them for personal use isn’t. (The issue of commercial importation of Canadian drugs
wholesale-style is beyond the scope of this article.)
Some lawyers we’ve spoken with take much legal insight from the FDA’s own policies like its “Chapter 9 of the FDA Guidance on Personal
Importations.” The Guidance reads in part as follows:
FDA personnel may use their discretion to allow entry of shipments of violative FDA regulated products when the quantity and purpose are
clearly for personal use and the product does not represent an unreasonable risk to the user. Even though all products that appear to be
in violation of statutes administered by FDA are subject to refusal, FDA personnel may use their discretion to examine the background,
risk and purpose of the product before making a final decision.
So even it were illegal to import Canadian prescriptions for personal use, it appears that as a matter of policy the FDA “looks the other
way” and permits Americans to bring in their drugs from Canada. We know of no court cases in which an individual was prosecuted in the USA
for importing personal use medications from Canada. Also, there have been a number of Congressional and Senate bills which have had
widespread support for importation of Canadian prescription drugs. A number of State and City governments have implemented plans to buy
drugs from Canadian pharmacies for their public sector workers in order to save huge sums of money. In June of 2006, the Nevada State Board
of Pharmacy created a program which licenses Canadian online pharmacies. Insurance companies, HMOs, and Pharmacy Benefit Managers have also
encouraged patients to consider ordering from Canada by offering incentives like no co-payments on such orders. Perhaps the most important
consideration in this legal debate is that about 2 million Americans have safely purchased their Canadian prescriptions from reputable online
pharmacies in Canada for the last decade without any legal problems.
NorthWestPharmacy.com has hundreds of thousands of satisfied patients in the United States. We are certified by the Canadian International
Pharmacy Association, the International Pharmacy Association of British Columbia, are buySAFE approved and TRUSTe privacy certified.
NorthWestPharmacy.com is also proud to be the most independently five star rated online pharmacy in the world through ShopperApproved.com,
the highly regarded online consumer ratings firm.
| 
