Repository / Julie Vennitti
Maruice Kaelber
Posted on 09/09/2001 4:05:24 AM PDT by ResistorSister
The trip to the border had gone well for Maurice Kaelber and his wife. They got what they’d come for.
Now they just had to get through customs.
The border guard came up to the car and asked what they’d done.
“I said I saw the Falls, and I didn’t lie, because I was there,” said Kaelber, a Jackson Township resident. “What they don’t know won’t hurt them.”
What the customs official didn’t know is that Kaelber had gone to Canada to score some drugs:
Repository / Julie Vennitti
Maruice Kaelber
• Drugs such as Apo-Metformin, a generic version of the diabetes medication Glucophage.
• Drugs such as Coreg, Imdur, Altace and Zaroxolyn that Kaelber, 71, takes for his heart condition and diabetes.
• Drugs that may have been illegal, and that the customs official could have confiscated.
Seniors such as Kaelber are making a new kind of drug run. Facing high prescription drug costs in the United States and lacking retirement prescription plans, they go on buses, in cars and on airplanes to the border.
In some cases, they are escorted there by members of the U.S. Congress. Locally, U.S. Rep. Sherrod Brown, D-Elyria, has offered free bus trips to Windsor since last year. Other congressmen from border states also tout such service.
Many of their passengers are breaking the law.
Practical roadblocks
It’s easy to see the advantages. Drugs are cheaper in Canada, partly because of a favorable exchange rate, partly because Canada regulates drug prices.
But it’s not as simple as hopping in the car and crossing the border. When Kaelber got to Niagara Falls, he ran into an obstacle immediately.
Although Kaelber went north with a prescription — and an enthusiastic “Go for it!” — from his doctor, the first pharmacist he visited told him he needed a prescription from a Canadian doctor.
The pharmacist directed him to the hospital, which offered to rewrite the prescription for $350, Kaelber said.
Fearing the cost would wipe out his savings, he went to a clinic across the street from the hospital. Kaelber paid a doctor there $70 to rewrite his prescription.
Then he went to a pharmacy in the same building but unassociated with the clinic, and bought a three-month supply of the five drugs, refillable three times by mail.
Kaelber was a familiar sight to Veronica Rudan, owner of PharmaShield Dispensary.
“I used to serve maybe one (American) a month,” she said. Now, “I’m filling prescriptions, like, one a day and mailing them out.”
Most of Rudan’s foreign customers come from Ohio, Pennsylvania and New York, looking primarily for blood pressure and cholesterol medication.
“I’ve had some people come from Florida,” she said. “Their prescriptions were so expensive it was worth it for them to fly down.”
PharmaShield does not dispense narcotics or blood thinners to Americans, she said.
Even with the doctor’s fee, Kaelber estimates he will save $986 a year.
Legal roadblocks
Until 1988, the trip Kaelber made was perfectly legal. There were no laws against bringing drugs into the United States from foreign countries, said Dustin May, legislative aide to U.S. Rep. Bernard Sanders, I-Vermont.
There were few controls, too, and this resulted in a “gray market” of counterfeit drugs making their way across borders. Congress responded by banning reimportation, part of the Prescription Drug Marketing Act of 1987, May said.
At the time, individual reimportation wasn’t a concern, since the difference in prices on each side of the border was small. But as the differential grew, more Americans sought relief across the border — and on the shady side of the law.
“The only U.S.-approved drug is the one that is made at the facility where we have inspected,” said Jason Brodsky, spokesman for the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
“Anytime somebody goes to Canada — goes physically, or they order through the mail — they will break a law. Period. That’s just a fact,” said May. “Whether Customs or the FDA chooses to go after you — that’s a different story.”
“We don’t arrest individuals,” Brodsky said. “We focus our resources on manufacturers and large-scale importers.”
Officials may confiscate drugs at the border if they don’t meet the FDA’s criteria, but many of the customs officials understand what drives seniors up north.
“In fact, along the Vermont border, customs officers often cheer seniors as they go across,” May said. Sanders is one of the representatives who organize drug runs for seniors.
Help may be on the way. Last month, the U.S. Congress approved a measure that would allow individuals to mail-order prescriptions from abroad. It awaits Senate approval.
On Wednesday, the Senate discussed allowing drug distributors to buy U.S.-made drugs from Canadian suppliers for resale in the United States. According to The Associated Press, legislation passed last year already allows such resale on drugs from certain countries — but the FDA, worried about counterfeit and adulterated drugs, hasn’t implemented the measure.
Local trip on hold
The murkiness of the law has stalled a proposed bus trip from Stark County for seniors.
Bus driver Charles Allen approached Davis Tours and Massillon Senior Center Director Nancy Johnson about organizing such a trip. After looking at information that recommended participants sign a waiver, Johnson decided not to get involved.
Sandy Hutson of Davis Tours is looking into it. “I want to make sure that it’s all perfectly legal,” she said. “I’m not going to be responsible for bringing medicine over the border (illegally).”
Brodsky said that if drugs don’t meet FDA guidelines, American patients have no assurance that they are getting what their doctor prescribed.
“We think it’s important for consumers to understand that they are placing themselves at risk and to understand that risk,” Brodsky said.
“The only thing that I can say is that in Canada, our laws are pretty strict also,” said Rudan.
Rudan acknowledges she is working in a gray area. She is happy to talk with an American reporter, but doesn’t want to draw the Canadian press’ attention.
“I look at it as a positive thing,” she said of the cross-border trips. Some of her patients “are paying as much as a mortgage per month on medication. I’ve seen people paying $1,000 a month. For them to save, it puts food on their tables.”
As for Kaelber, he’s “very confident” in the drugs he has. He hopes his experience inspires others. Even when told of the FDA’s stance toward what he did, he readily agrees to use his name in the story.
“I just want to help people,” he said.
U.S. Reps facilitating desperate senior citizens in breaking the law, Canadian doctors writing prescriptions for a fee, and custom officers cheering the drug running seniors.
Why should any of us, obey any law?
This is the key question following the Clinton administration's eight years of systematic criminality with little consequence. Sadly, the Bush administration takes the same view of federal law regarding immigration.
It's also the inevitable result of thousands (probably millions ) of laws on the books in this country. Nobody can possibly know the law so few could obey it if they cared. Most do not care.
It's no longer about obeying the law. It's now simply what you can get away with.
RIGHT!
Like the guy in the article said, "...He hopes his experience inspires others...I just want to help people,” he said.
In his own mind, he probably believes he is perfectly justified and heroic in breaking the law because he hopes his illegal activity will inspire and help others.
When government representatives sponsor citizens to break the law; for whatever reason, it is time to change the law.
---max
Our rules of conduct, our customs, our communities, and the future of this country are the victims.
In the meantime - is there a law to prosecute government representatives who sponsor citizens to break the law?
The word rapacious is so appropriate because the pharmaceutical industry vultures are allowed to "feed" on our weakest, yet wealthiest group of citizens, the elderly.
Because you will be caught, tried, and punished if you don't. That's the way society works. But hey, if you like jail, disobey any law you wish.
A far-higher percentage of people in that border area do "civil disobedience" than the percentage of blacks who ever did "civil disobedience."
You don't have to be female, black, American, and named "Rosa" to do "civil disobedience."
Because you will be caught, tried, and punished if you don't. That's the way society works.
LOL! Oh, really?
"Why should any of us, obey any law?"
Because you will be caught, tried, and punished if you don't. That's the way society works.
--------------------------------------
How about we restore a constitutional society that doesn't have assine, socialistic laws?
I agree. The federal government has so much unyielding control over the citizens that many feel they have to break the law, rather than seeking ways to change the law.
We The People...cannot change much of anything - anymore. Breaking the law isn't right, but it is not right that we have lost our voice.
All along the border:
"Head Shops" will open
The non-smoking hotel rooms will become obsolete
Fast food restaurants will offer the "Munchie Specials"
Travel agents will offer "smoking tours" across Canada
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