U.S. to stop seizing Canadian medicine

Under pressure from Congress, U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials scrapped their 11-month-old policy of seizing prescription drugs imported through the mail from Canada, The Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday.

The practice, implemented last November, had come under fire from lawmakers for depriving tens of thousands of American seniors of their drugs and protecting the high prices charged by U.S. pharmaceutical companies, according to the report.

Lynn Hollinger, a Customs spokeswoman, said the seizures would stop Oct. 9 but declined to explain the policy reversal. "We're going back to operating procedures prior to November 2005," she said.

Although most prescription-drug importations are illegal under U.S. law, Customs had long turned a blind eye to small mail orders coming across the border from Canada, before launching the new policy of seizures late last year.

Prescription drugs are significantly cheaper in Canada because its national health-care system negotiates lower prices for its citizens. The U.S., by contrast, is one of the only markets in the world where the government doesn't exercise control over drug prices, said the report.

As of mid-July, Customs had seized more than 37,000 prescription-drug packages from Canada. The agency declined to say how many more packages its agents have seized since then.

Congressional pressure had been building against the seizures. At the behest of Sen. Bill Nelson, a Florida Democrat, the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Government Affairs was investigating the new Customs policy.

Source: Xinhua