FEATURE
against Canada Drugs and its affiliates,
charging the company with smuggling,
money laundering, and conspiracy. 15 The
company’s website says it offers low-priced
medicines from Canada, the U.K., Austra-
lia, and New Zealand; the company was
accused of falsifying customs declarations
on the value of drugs, improper storage of
the drugs, and sales of counterfeit medi-
cine. In all, the company and its affiliates
were charged with crimes related to the sale
of $78 million in mislabeled or counterfeit
prescription drugs.
The company again was fined for illegal
importation in April 2018 for importing
counterfeit cancer drugs and other unap-
proved pharmaceuticals into the U.S. 16 A
federal judge in Montana approved federal
prosecutors’ recommended sentences,
totaling $34 million in fines and five years’
probation for Canada Drugs. The online
pharmacy also will permanently cease
the sale of all unapproved, misbranded,
and counterfeit drugs and will surrender
all the domain names for the websites
through which it sells drugs.
“There is concern that there have been
fake cancer medications distributed, not
only to pharmacies but to doctors’ offices
and hospitals throughout the U.S.,” said
Kenneth L. McCall, PharmD, associate
professor in the College of Pharmacy at
University of New England in Portland,
Maine. “People are worried that these
medications do not contain ingredients
that they are labeled to contain and may
contain contaminants.”
State Solutions
To try to circumvent what they perceive
as inaction at the federal level, several
states have recently put forth legislation
that would allow for the importation of
prescription drugs from Canada.