Blowback

5:35 pm, 10/18/04

Blowback
I wonder what Abby Ottenhoff has to say about this.

More than 30 Canadian internet pharmacies have decided not to accept bulk orders of prescription drugs from US states and municipalities.

The move delivers a potentially serious setback to US politicians most notably Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry campaigning to give Americans easier access to cheap drugs from Canada.

...[G]rowing concern in Canada that growing exports to the US could lead to rising prices and shortages north of the border has prompted the Canadian International Pharmacy Association (Cipa), whose members include several of the biggest internet and mail-order drugstores, to act. "We don't want to give Americans the impression that we have unlimited supply for them to tap into on a commercial basis," said David Mackay, the association's executive director. Americans, he added, "can't get everything from Canada. We can't be your complete drugstore".

They did extort their mobster-like arrangements on the assumption that those prices would affect the Canadian market only.

Several states, such as Minnesota and New Hampshire, have set up websites directing residents to approved pharmacies in Canada. Cipa members would continue to service these customers, Mr Mackay said, but would not deal with states such as Illinois and Wisconsin that have proposed turning over their entire supply system to a Canadian internet pharmacy.

Cipa members make up about a quarter of the roughly 150 internet pharmacies operating in Canada, raising the question whether others will follow its lead. Mr Mackay said discussion had been heated at an all-day meeting of Cipa last month at which the new policy was approved. With pharmaceutical manufacturers seeking to restrict supplies and the US Congressional Budget Office recently saying that reimportation from Canada would have a "negligible" impact on US drugs spending, the internet pharmacies have already had difficulty meeting demand from south of the border.

...[P]ublic opinion appears to be gradually turning against the online operators. Canadian Treatment Action Council, a lobby group representing pharmacists and patients, is due to speak out today against drug exports to the US.

I've said it before: This could go the easy way, with an open market that reaches equilibrium and ushers in a new Golden Age for pharmaceutical research and entrepreneurialism, or it could go the hard way, with advocates of socialism defending their indefensible economic policies of blackmail to the death, quite possibly causing a trade war that threatens to cripple the industry and bring about a medical dark age.

CIPA, at least, has demonstrated which side they're on, and I expect others will follow, bringing up the third possibility, that reimportation will simply be a huge, humiliating failure for Blagojevich, Doyle, Kerry, and others.

Will they come to grips with the reality that everything they think they "know" is wrong, or simply find a scapegoat? (That's rhetorical.)