Released: August 31, 2006

Cross-border prescription drugs can be counterfeit

Source: By Julie Appleby, USA Today

One of Canada’s largest Internet pharmacies — the one credited as the birthplace of the cross-border drug industry — is selling counterfeit drugs to U.S. consumers, the FDA said Wednesday. The Food and Drug Administration warned consumers that sub-par versions of Lipitor, Crestor, Celebrex and seven other drugs shipped by Mediplan Prescription Plus Pharmacy were seized en route to Americans during the past few weeks.

With that warning, the FDA jumps back into the debate over the importation of prescription drugs. In doing so, it takes on one of the most well-known leaders of the industry: Andrew Strempler, founder of Mediplan, considered the first Internet pharmacy.

Strempler says the FDA allegations are false: “We test our products and stand behind our products.”

The company, founded in Manitoba in 1999 when he was 25, has dispensed about 2 million prescriptions and saved Americans at least $100 million, by his reckoning. It has also made him a wealthy man and helped spawn competitors in the cross-border pharmacy industry, which does an estimated $1 billion in business annually with customers in the USA.

“We were the first to do this,” Strempler says of his Internet pharmacy, which he says did more than $50 million in business last year. “So we’ve created quite a stir with the pharmaceutical industry.”

The FDA says it tested products sold by Mediplan and its related websites, including RxNorth.com and Canadiandrugstore.com, finding that the drugs were shipped from countries other than Canada, do not contain the proper amount of active ingredients and are considered counterfeit because they are sold as brand-name products and are not.

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