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Discount meds company works in federal law ‘gray area’
By Dennis Quick
Senior Staff Writer
A plain storefront, a few tables and chairs, a pair of computers and other sundry office equipment is all there is physically to Lowcountry Discount Meds in West Ashley. It’s hardly your typical drugstore.
That’s because it isn’t typical. Lowcountry Discount Meds is a gateway to inexpensive Canadian prescription drugs. Store owners Etai Timna and Ryan Trout go online to a Canadian pharmacy’s Web site and display medicines and prices to customers—a considerable increase in ease of use and safety for consumers who may not be Internet-savvy. Customers then send their prescriptions to the pharmacy, which fills the prescriptions and ships them to the customers. Customers pay the pharmacy and the pharmacy pays Lowcountry Discount Meds.
However, the future of Lowcountry Discount Meds largely depends on federal legislation. Although it is illegal for U.S. residents and pharmacies to import medicines from across the border, the law is rarely enforced. For instance, Canadian prescription drug importers are plentiful in South Florida because of that region’s large senior population, Timna points out. Some lawmakers in northern states whose consumers sometimes travel to Canada for more affordable drugs are lenient toward Canadian drug importers.
Even though Lowcountry Discount Meds helps its clients skirt the law, Timna and Trout are not worried about legal repercussions. “We’re not placing orders, and it’s not an enforced law,” Trout explains. “It’s a gray area.”
Nearly two years ago, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill legalizing the importation of Canadian drugs. The Senate has yet to ratify the bill.
American pharmacies tend to see services like Lowcountry Discount Meds as unfair competition.
“Canadian drugs are definitely a competitive threat to legitimate pharmacies in the Lowcountry,” says Jim Bracewell, executive vice president of the South Carolina Pharmacy Association. “A pharmacy licensed in our state would be subject to losing that license for possessing or selling illegal drugs if they offered or filled prescriptions with illegally imported drugs.”
Safety concerns about drugs imported from Canada has to do mainly with “re-importation,” in which drugs are manufactured in the United States, sold to Canada and then sold back to U.S. residents and pharmacies, Bracewell explains.
“Once those drugs leave the United States, you don’t know where they go,” Bracewell says. He adds that Canada could export the drugs to another country, where the drugs can get altered, sold back to Canada and then back into the United States.
Also, some drugs shipped to the United States from Canada are often imported from India, China, South Africa and other countries whose safety standards do not meet the Food and Drug Administration’s, says Bracewell.
A rising threat to U.S. importers of Canadian prescription drugs is the potential blacklisting by U.S. drug companies of Canadian pharmacies working with the importers, says Timna. Blacklisting would drive up prices because Canadian pharmacies would have a tougher time getting their drugs.
If the United States’ crackdown on Canadian pharmacies begins to hurt his business or if Canada decides to limit or stop exportation of drugs to the United States, Lowcountry Discount Meds will turn to European pharmacies, Timna says.
Lowcountry Discount Meds is Timna’s second attempt at running a store offering discount drugs from Canada. The first, Rx Depot, also located in West Ashley, shut down when a federal judge closed all 85 of Tulsa-based Rx Depot’s nationwide franchises.
Within two weeks, Timna became affiliated with a different Canadian pharmacy and opened Lowcountry Discount Meds. The store is part of a $700 million drug-importation industry.
Canadian drugs cost less than those sold in U.S. pharmacies because Canada’s socialized medicine puts price controls on prescription drugs. With the exception of generic brands, drugs prices in U.S. pharmacies are elevated to cover drug research and development costs and advertising expenses. Americans pay 81% more than Canadians, 108% more than the French and 118% more than Italians for the same drugs, according to a 2004 report by Boston University’s School of Public Health.
Dennis Quick covers health and wellness for the Business Journal. E-mail him at dquick@crbj.com.
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