Answering the question, Should those companies be patronized? requires the purchaser to pay some attention to the law of the land. That law says you must not buy drugs abroad. But exegesis on the law goes on all the time, and there are court rulings, for instance, in West Virginia, which manage to authorize such purchases (by not prosecuting offenders), while, in Oklahoma, there is evidence of an itch to uphold the law. Meanwhile, the head of the Food and Drug Administration, Dr. Mark McClellan, stresses his concern for safety. He is not trenchant on the economic question, which is what most purchasers are interested in.

What are the rules in a free society?

(l) The producer of a patented product is entitled to charge what it wishes to charge for that product, for as long as the patent is in force.

(2) The government is legitimately entitled, by law and public sanction, to regulate the sale of the product by ascertaining its safety.

(3) If the government is a heavy purchaser of the product, it is entitled to bargain for lower prices than the producer would otherwise set.

(4) If we subscribe, as free societies are supposed to do, to free trade, the consumer is entitled to search out sellers of the product who are willing to make it available cheaper than one can get it at home.

(5) The producer is entitled to vary the price of its product to other countries according to myriad considerations, for instance, the ability to pay.

Enter Canadian pharmaceutical merchandisers. They get the product cheaper than U.S. individual consumers by buying it in bulk and pretending that their orders are intended for local consumption. "Pretending," because they don't sign a legal agreement limiting sales to neighbors. If the Canada TrustRx Pharmacy, which is very much alive, moves over the period of a couple of years from ordering 100,000 Lipitor tablets to ordering 1 million Lipitor tablets, the producer is not likely to complain. Continued...