Drug shortages in Canada have become a way of life, and, unfortunately, they have worsened considerably in recent years. In 2023, Health Canada reported more than 2,400 instances of drug shortage. It is common for Canadians to go to their local pharmacy and be unable to fill their prescriptions because their drug is not in stock.
Now, Florida has been given the green light by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to start importing drugs, in bulk, from Canada. The reality is Canada doesn’t have the drugs, and the United States shouldn’t see this as a workable or sustainable solution to its desire for lower drug prices.
There has been a lot of attention over the FDA’s decision to let Florida import drugs from Canada. And while the dream of filling American medicine cabinets with inexpensive foreign drugs sounds nice, this Canadian pharmacist is here to tell you that these programs won’t work and the math doesn’t add up.
The population of Canada is less than 40 million people. Florida has 22 million citizens. But it’s not only Florida that wants to buy drugs wholesale from Canada. Other states — Colorado, Maine, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Dakota, Texas, Vermont and Wisconsin — also have drug importation plans in place and are awaiting FDA approval. Those nine states combined have a population of 70 million. You can see the fundamental problem here: We can’t meet the medication needs of nine states with a cumulative population nearly double that of Canada.
Florida has said it wants to target imports of drugs to treat HIV, AIDS, diabetes and psychiatric conditions. Canada has patients with those conditions and those medications are always at risk of shortage in Canada. We can’t afford to exacerbate our already fragile supply. Health Canada, Canada’s governing authority, has said as much and has made it clear that it will block any large-scale exports that could worsen drug shortages at home.
Americans may think Canada can produce more, but the fact is we don’t make most of the drugs that we consume, and we must import what we need. Every year, drug companies allocate a certain amount of their global supply to Canada, intended for Canadian patients only. Manufacturers are not sending us extra medications that we can then send to the United States. One study published in the Canadian Journal of Public Health concluded that if only 10 percent of U.S. prescriptions were filled from Canadian imports, Canada’s drug supply would be exhausted in 224 days.
Every day, pharmacists in every part of Canada are dealing with shortages, and they would much rather spend their time helping their patients than calling other pharmacies to find drugs that are on backorder. Every time we turn someone away, it’s not just an inconvenience; it affects their lives.
Yes, Americans want lower drug prices. However, it is wrong and unrealistic for U.S. politicians to portray drug imports as the magical solution. It may look like an obvious solution. But if we can’t take care of our own, how can we care for yours?