Ed Wallace, a Dallas/Fort Worth radio talk show host, recently penned a great column for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram called “The Myth of Free Trade,” in which he lambasts U.S. government hypocrisy on trade policy and endorses Americans purchasing their prescription medications from Canada.

Here’s an excerpt:

Elected officials support many enduring myths that sound not just good but economically reasonable. They oversimplify them in business logic that helps America’s financial future sound potentially exciting. Once you get past the ostensible intelligence of the sales pitch, though, the facts of the real world intrude. That they are myths may be scarier than anything in Grimm’s Fairy Tales, but they are -– equally fanciful tales.

The first is the myth of free trade…

Remember when it was big news how many American senior citizens were traveling into Canada to fill their prescriptions? In Canada they could buy their prescription drugs at incredible discounts, both because of the exchange rate and because the Canadian government negotiates lower costs on those drugs in its citizens’ behalf.

Many of our elderly simply couldn’t afford to buy those life-saving drugs in the States. And you’d think Americans would have every right to shop in Canada for cheaper drugs: NAFTA was sold to us as enabling total free trade between us, Canada and Mexico.

Yet, as far as Washington was concerned, old folks could go to Whistler, Canada, and purchase ski gear all they wanted –- but don’t even try to cross the border for cheaper drugs that was proving to save lives.

You tell ‘em, Ed!

Rick Coddington, a columnist for the Mountain Mail newspaper of Socorro, New Mexico (population 8,879), is a political conservative with a wry independent streak.

He’s also — officially, at least — a lawbreaker. Because he is proud to tell all who will listen that he purchases his prescription medications from Canadian pharmacies.

As he writes in a recent column:

I buy drugs from Canada for pennies on the dollar. Even with prescription drug coverage, I can buy –- outright -– drugs from Canada for less than the co-pay costs to get them here! What does that tell you about the cost of prescriptions? It tells me the drugs actually cost less than the insurance co-pays! If you look at the “list price” of the drugs, you can see (in some cases) the profit is 300 to 400 percent!

The only difference in the drugs is the profit. The Canadian pharmacy from which I have been buying for years is obviously making money. In contrast to that, if you come down to the good-old U.S., not only are we paying three or four times what the drugs are worth, we are being taxed into oblivion to “bail out” the poor corporations that would just go broke if we tax-saps weren’t shoveling money to them.

Fortunately for Rick and the countless other Americans who save money every day by buying their medications from Canada, the FDA effectively permits individuals to purchase supplies of up to 90 days of their prescription drugs, even though the practice is officially against the law.

With U.S. public approval for Canadian drugs running at more than 70 percent, Washington politicians know they’d be messing with a hornet’s nest if they tried to stop you.

It’s no secret that legitimate Canadian pharmacies despise so-called “Canadian pharmacy” spam — those illegal missives you receive in your inbox promising you can buy drugs like Viagra with no prescription.

The reality is that these so-called Canadian pharmacies aren’t Canadian at all (and in many cases aren’t pharmacies at all). They are criminal operations based in places like Russia or various Third World countries. They are scam artists — and they give legal, licensed Canadian pharmacies a bad name.

Fortunately, these spammers are increasingly being forced to use words other than “Canadian pharmacy” in their e-mails. The reason is simple: people are wising up to the scam.

According to BitDefender, which offers weekly reports on e-mail spam trends:

It seems like medicine spammers took a more discrete approach this week, advertising their products without using the keywords “Canadian Pharmacy.” The Canadian Pharmacy spammers take various approaches such as using various mail subjects to make the message look as if they had been sent by friends to make users open the messages.

The words appearing most in spam e-mails, according to BitDefender, include “click,” “email,” “news,” “please,” and “privacy.”

Every week, BitDefender analyzes about seven million spam messages collected through a worldwide network of “honey pots.” A honey pot is an e-mail address that is only used to collect spam. The large number of analyzed messages and the global distribution of honey pots ensure reliable results, the company says.

The National Association of Boards of Pharmacy (NABP) last week released a report on online pharmacies that contained some startling claims.

Among other things, the NABP attempts to link Canadian online pharmacies to terrorism:

…purchasing medications from unknown and illegal sources via the Internet and other means is compromising the US medication distribution system and making US citizens vulnerable to bioterrorism attacks.

I guess it’s possible this is a valid threat — but frankly, it seems more like a scare tactic tied to a hot-button issue.

The NABP is widely quoted in the media on questions pertaining to Canadian pharmacies. Unfortunately, the NABP’s pattern has been to overhype the dangers of online pharmacies and to link unsafe, unlicensed foreign pharmacies with legitimate pharmacies that are licensed and in good standing with the Canadian government.

The NABP wants you to think that law-abiding, decent Canadian pharmacies are just as bad as the Russian crime syndicates that spam your inbox with misspelled solitications for Viagra. This is flat-out wrong.

The NABP’s “educational” efforts on online pharmacies have been subsidized, in no small part, by Big Pharma. Big Pharma loses money when consumers buy their medications from Canadian pharmacies. So the organization tends to take an extreme stance, overstating its case and confusing consumers.

In fact, the NABP report contains statements that appear to be simply inaccurate. For example, the press release touting the report states:

An alarming number of Internet drug outlets advertising on search engines flagrantly offer prescription medicine, including controlled substances, without a valid prescription… Many of these sites violate the recently adopted Ryan Haight Online Pharmacy Consumer Protection Act, which prohibits the dispensing of controlled substance medications over the Internet without a valid prescription that has included a face-to-face physical examination.

I am curious which pharmacies and search engines the NABP is referring to, since Google is careful to only accept advertising from pharmacies that have been verified by PharmacyChecker.com. PharmacyChecker only approves pharmacies that meet stringent standards, including requiring an original doctor’s prescription based on an in-person consultation.

Certainly, if you do a Google search on Viagra or other medications that consumers commonly seek online, you will find the search results littered with online pharmacies — many of them fraudulent and claiming to be Canadian (when in most cases they aren’t). But this is not search engine advertising; these are organic search results, which Google has no control over.

Frankly, I think the evidence is clear that Google, with PharmacyChecker as its verification authority, has done a good job of separating legitimate pharmacies from fraudulent ones in its AdWords advertising.

So while you should certainly be cautious when buying drugs online, you shouldn’t believe every scary thing you read, either. For the truth about Canadian pharmacies, read this.

You’ll see below two logos for similar organizations, the first for CIDA — the Canadian International Drug Association — and the second for CIPA, the Canadian International Pharmacy Association.

As you look across online pharmacy sites, you will find that some carry the seal of CIDA, whereas others carry the seal of CIPA.

What’s the difference between the two?

CIPA is a respected online-pharmacy verification authority comprised of pharmacies licensed by the Canadian government.

CIDA, on the other hand, doesn’t exist. There’s no such organization.

The fake CIPA seal is just one of the many ruses employed by rogue online pharmacies, as identified in this article by Spam Trackers.

Rogue pharmacy sites claim to be based in Canada — but are typically located in Russia and other countries known for online organized crime.

Don’t get scammed. To make sure the Canadian pharmacy site you’re visiting is legit, take the following precautions:

• Confirm the pharmacy has a valid license. Every Canadian online pharmacy should have a license in its home province. Locate the pharmacy’s license number on its Web site and the name of the regulatory body that granted the license. Contact the body to confirm the license’s authenticity.
• Look for the CIPA or PharmacyChecker.com seal — and verify they’re legit. To confirm that the pharmacy has been approved by one of these verification authorities, go to each organization’s Web site and conduct a search of approved pharmacies.
• Never pick a pharmacy based on a spam solicitation. Legitimate online pharmacies respect your privacy. They don’t spam you.

Or, rather than doing all of this legwork yourself, you can simply join Canadian Online Pharmacies, where we ensure that all of our member pharmacies are licensed and in good standing with the Canadian government. Join us today!

With a law to permit drug purchases from Canadian pharmacies expected to pass later this year, drugmakers are planning to fight back by retaliating against those Canadian pharmacies that choose to sell to Americans.

In the past, Big Pharma has sent letters to Canadian pharmacies telling them they would no longer receive quantity discounts if they sold drugs to U.S. consumers. These measures have been successful in bumping up the prices charged to U.S. consumers — but Americans still save an average of more than 50 percent by buying Canadian.

Word around the pharmaceutical industry is that drugmakers are plotting behind closed doors about how to respond to the Canadian pharmacy issue after the bill is passed. Will they clamp down even harder on Canadian pharmacies by restricting supplies? If they do, how will the FDA respond to what would clearly be an attempt to undermine the law?

It should definitely be interesting to watch. You can be sure that Big Pharma will do everything in its power to protect its double-digit profit margins.

A just-released study by the Fraser Institute confirms that brand-name drugs are much cheaper in Canada than the United States. It also shows the price difference has increased in recent years.

According to the study, after currency adjustments:

• In 2007, Canadians paid an average of 53 percent less than Americans for the 100 most common brand-name drugs
• In 2006, Canadians paid 51 percent less
• In 2003, Canadians paid 43 percent less

This increasing price disparity represents a great buying opportunity for U.S. prescription drug consumers who purchase medications from Canadian pharmacies.

What’s more, if you factor in the growing strength of the U.S. dollar compared to the Canadian dollar, the price difference is even greater. In many cases, you can save up to 80 percent by buying prescription drugs from Canada.

This is a picture of U.S. Sen. Byron Dorgan of North Dakota, announcing the bipartisan bill that will officially allow U.S. consumers to purchase drugs from licensed Canadian pharmacies.

He’s holding two bottles of Lipitor, both made at the same plant in Ireland, then distributed to pharmacies in Canada and the United States.

Said Dorgan:

I have in fact two bottles here, the only difference is in color, one is red and one is blue …The only difference is the U.S. consumer gets to pay more than twice as much for the identical pill put in the same bottle. That’s unfair we believe.

While the bill, when made law as expected, will officially make it legal to purchase medications from Canada, you don’t have to wait to save money on your drug purchases. Based on the current FDA guidelines, you have little to fear in buying Canadian medications for personal use.

Join us today!

The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) has produced an informative story looking at trends in Americans buying drugs from Canadian online pharmacies.

The story notes that at the start of decade, Americans were buying more than two million packages of prescription drugs annually from Canadian and other foreign pharmacies — adding up to a billion-dollar business. Since then, a rising Canadian dollar along with Medicare Part D have led to a decrease in Canadian drug purchases among Americans.

But the tide is shifting back in favor of Canadian online pharmacies, the CBC reports. The story points out that the Canadian dollar has fallen by 20 percent over the past six months, relative to the U.S. dollar, making Canadian drugs even more of a bargain. In addition, President Obama is eager to sign proposed legislation allowing Americans to purchase drugs legally from licensed Canadian pharmacies.

The CBC story includes a chart that compares prices for various medications at CanadaDrugs.com (a member of the Canadian Online Pharmacies network) and the U.S-based Drugstore.com.

Joe and Terry Graedon write the popular People’s Pharmacy column syndicated in newspapers nationwide. Here’s how the Graedons answered a recent question on Medicare Part D and Canadian pharmacies.

Q. I am about to fall into the Medicare Part D “donut hole” and would like to buy my drugs from Canada to save money for the remainder of this year. How do I know which online pharmacy to select?

A. Many senior citizens who signed up for the prescription drug benefit from Medicare are shocked when they hit the so-called donut hole. When drug expenses come to a total of $2400, patients must pay 100 percent of their medication bill. If drug expenses eventually exceed $5,451, Part D kicks in again with catastrophic coverage until the end of the year.

If you don’t think your drug expenses will get that high, you may want to consider purchasing your medicines from Canada. (These do not qualify to get you out of the donut hole, though.) Be sure that you are shopping from a legitimate Canadian online pharmacy. Fraudulent pharmacies may be doing business from other countries without the quality control we expect from Canada.

We completely agree with the Graedons — which is why we created Canadian Online Pharmacies to ensure you only purchase from licensed Canadian pharmacies.

By the way, the dollar figures in the Graedons’ answer have changed for 2009, with drug prices soaring every year. The donut hole now begins when drug expenditures total $2,700.