April 28, 2008
Racher Press, Inc.
WINNIPEG, Manitoba--While Canadian Internet pharmacy operators scan the campaign platforms of the United States presidential candidates to compare their respective levels of commitment to opening up the market to less-expensive imported prescription drugs, those based in Manitoba have a more immediate concern. They are threatened with being regulated out of existence.
The 22 Internet pharmacies operating in Manitoba account for over half the Canadian volume of this category of activity, but that volume has shrunk by almost 50% over the last few years.
Stricter U.S. import regulations, better drug insurance plans for U.S. residents and the increase in the exchange rate of Canadian currency to around par with the U.S. dollar have diminished the attraction of imports.
Nevertheless, Manitoba Internet pharmacies are estimated to have turned over $250 million (Canadian) and employed some 500 people last year. These are considerable figures for a thinly populated province with a small manufacturing base.
Through a notice in its January 2008 newsletter, the Manitoba Pharmaceutical Association (MPhA), the
province's pharmacy sector regulator, notified its members that it will stop licensing pharmacies that do business over the Internet as of June 30 of this year. The notice said: "As stated previously, Council is concerned there is a marked decrease in the protection of patients who have received components of their care outside Canada through impediments discovered in the inspection and investigation processes."
Commenting on the notice, Troy Harwood Jones, president of the Manitoba International Pharmacists Association (MIPA), the organization formed to represent the sector, said: "My members do feel beleaguered. There is no demonstrated risk of harm to the public ... that justifies this attack on the industry.
"We don't break any rules. All of this is somewhat frustrating. So far there have not been any real demonstrated issues. They just think we should stop."
Harwood Jones argued that there is no impediment to the association investigating complaints from U.S. customers. He said that there has to his knowledge been only one such complaint in the past eight years (the business got under way around the turn of this century). In that case the regulator successfully prosecuted the pharmacist concerned. "That suggests the system works fine," he remarked.
Harwood Jones noted that the licensing association is dominated by hospital and academic pharmacists. They have "an anti-business agenda," he suggested.
MIPA has taken its case to the provincial government in the belief that a government that has worked hard to attract and retain industry to an economy formerly heavily dependent on agriculture will want to find a way to retain this sizable amount of economic activity and the well-paid jobs international pharmacies offer.
That appeal appears to have met with a positive reaction. The Manitoba government has appointed a mediator to find a way to resolve the issue and, it is assumed, retain the jobs in Manitoba that are at stake. Both Alberta and British Columbia are home to other Internet operations, and a ban on Manitoba pharmacies might induce emigration to one of these alternative jurisdictions.
"We want them to work out a resolution," says Colin Lemoine, a spokesman for Andrew Swan, Manitoba's minister of competitiveness, training and trade. "We think that Internet pharmacy can be regulated in a way that protects patient safety."
MIPA general manager Gord Haugh says the firms in his association are confident that the talks will be fruitful. "But they still have this sword of Damocles hanging over the industry," he remarks.
In March, while negotiations under the auspices of the government were still going on, MPhA asked its members to vote on another measure that would have banned Manitoba pharmacists from filling all prescriptions (not just Internet prescriptions) from outside the province.
MIPA challenged the procedure in court, arguing irregularities in the process. A judge did not sustain the challenge, but in any event the pharmacist members of MPhA voted down the proposal by a substantial majority.
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