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By
Tom Cohen
Associated Press
TIn recent years, busloads of Americans have crossed into
Canada to buy cheaper prescription drugs with help from
Canadian doctors.
Now
many of those customers, mostly senior citizens facing large
medicine bills, make that trip by the Internet, creating
a growing industry that is attracting the attention of regulators.
On May
14, the Ontario College of Pharmacists filed the province's
first charges against a Web site selling prescription drugs,
accusing it of doing so without a license.
It is
the initial salvo in what could be a lengthy battle over
how to regulate the Internet prescription drug industry,
raising questions about whether technology has advanced
faster than the governing laws and policies.
"This
is the first time we've done this," Layne Verbeek,
spokesman for the Ontario college. "It's a new area."
Verbeek
said a body of rulings and court decisions is needed to
ascertain if existing laws and regulations properly address
the issues.
The
charges were filed against The Canadian Drug Store Inc.,
one of its directors, an Ontario pharmacist, an Ontario
pharmacy, an Ontario physician and a Canadian drug wholesaler.
Representatives
of the Canadian Drug Store could not be reached for comment.
"There
are always entrepreneurs wanting to find ways around the
rules to make money. There's nothing wrong with entrepreneurship,
but we're really at the beginning of this," Verbeek
said. "These won't be the last charges we lay."
One
of the most successful internet drug store entrepreneurs
is Andrew Strempler, whose Mediplan Health Consulting Inc.
in Manitoba fills about 1,000 prescriptions each day for
U.S. customers who place orders through the Web sites RxNorth.com
and Canadiandrugstore.com.
His
operation, which employs more than 100 people including
eight pharmacists, only handles non-narcotic orders that
have a prescription from doctors licensed in Canada. The
service includes having a Canadian-licensed doctor co-sign
prescriptions from U.S. doctors for American patients.
While
Canadian regulatory bodies say doctors only should sign
prescriptions for patients they examine themselves, Strempler
called that "kind of a dream."
"How
many doctors have prescribed a drug based on another doctor's
opinion? That's the reality out there," he said. "The
issue isn't whether.the patients are receiving proper care.
The issue is we are doing something new, and when you do
something new, people are going to question it."
Cases
like the Ontario charges give the entire industry a bad
name, said Strempler, who has a message on his Canadiandrugstore.com
site noting it is different from The Canadian Drug Store
Inc. cited by Ontario regulators.
"We're
fulfilling a need" for American senior citizens who
cannot afford the higher-priced medicine south of the border,
he said. "There's nothing scandalous in this indus-
try. You'll always have one or two bad apples. We really
hope that doesn't ruin the reputation in this industry."
In the
Ontario case, the College of Pharmacists filed 15 charges
that accuse The Canadian Drug Store Inc. of operating an
unaccredited Internet pharmacy without registered pharmacists
from November 2001 to February 2002. It said the Toronto-based
operation filled prescriptions written by U.S. doctors for
U.S. patients.
Along
with lacking a license, such an operation violated policies
for physicians and pharmacists set by the Ontario College
of Pharmacists and the Ontario College of Physicians and
Surgeons.
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