inuitsquid:

inuitsquid:

maytheskitty:

inuitsquid:

mentalisttraceur:

So today I learned that it is technically possible for a person in the US to order insulin online from Canada without a prescription.

And that it costs less than the copays/deductibles that many US insurance policies will charge along the way to getting insulin here in the US. And I realized this requires a PSA.

Because this is technically illegal to do. You might be easily misled into thinking that it is legal because:

• US customs only rarely rejects such shipments,
• as far as I know the US has never prosecuted a person for ordering quantities that are reasonable for a couple months of personal use,
• Canada does not have any laws making it illegal for their pharmacies to ship insulin to US patients,
• Canada does not require a prescription at all for insulin,
• Canada often gets their insulin from the same factories that the US does, literally often the same exact drugs, and with comparable standards of quality and safeguards and regulations,
• Canadian pharmacies consider shipping to US customers a significant part of their business model, so much so that they have payed for quite a lot of advertising to US customers through Google, and
• some US citizens and residents already choose to get their insulin from Canada that way.

Wow, just look at all those reasons why you might mistakenly think it is legal - it is affordable, legal and widely accepted* on Canada’s side, and the insulin comes from legit sources. But to reiterate it is definitely illegal.

(*Edit: “widely accepted” here was summarizing the pharmaceutical companies’ outlook and current legal and regulatory situation as described above - but as the notes on this post indicate, there is growing Canadian concerns and push-back about too many Americans doing this putting a strain on the availability insulin for the Canadians themselves so this may change.)

So you should absolutely never do it, no matter how much you might need insulin to not die.

No obligation, but if you could help spread the word of how this seemingly innocent method of getting insulin is actually illegal, you’d be doing a great service to the people who medically need insulin.

Otherwise, in a moment of desperation when they cannot afford it or their prescription for it cannot be renewed in time, they might make the wrong decision and buy insulin this illegal way, and that would be bad.

Just a note, this is NOT causing any insulin shortages. Insulin is very easy to make, and there are not enough diabetics in America to ever cause a shortage in Canada by coming to Canada for insulin. Only a small percentage are capable of. The reason why people think there is a shortage is because a tumblr user severely misquoted and misinterpreted a post saying that some pharmacists were worried that Americans would cause a shortage of a variety of medications, but not insulin.

This was then spread even further by a Canadian politician blog, who didn’t actually read the source article, and tried to defend it.

There is no, and will be no, insulin shortage in Canada. Not unless 10% of all Americans come across the border to buy insulin, in which case, we would run out in several months. However, that’s not going to happen. For reference, around 9% of Americans are diabetics, and not all of them are insulin dependant.

Do you have a source for the claim? Because shortages due Americans crossing the border was definitely a large concern several months ago when all those insulin caravans were happening. It’s not a stretch of the imagination to believe that bus loads of people buying a few months worth of insulin would wipe out the stock in smaller border towns creating a shortage until more is shipped in.

While the short term shortage is only likely to happen from a caravan and not ordering online, I still think it’s relevant to discuss what affect Americans crossing border shopping for meds have on Canadians due to shortages of other medicines people cross the border to obtain like epipens.

Well

when this is what comes up when googing insulin shortages in Canada, it’s telling there’s no shortage. Also, all of my family is diabetic. If there was anything close to a shortage, I thiiiiink I would know.

I can also dig through my blog to prove that this was spread by a Canadian politics blog too, though that was over a month ago. In the post, the op took a person worrying about possible shortages in an article that stated there was currently no shortages, to mean that there was a shortage. Which, obviously, is not the same thing.

There are actual prescription drugs that ARE at risk of running out due to not enough being produced already, but insulin is not one of them. Epipens are though. There is a shortage of them in Canada, along with certain antidepressants.

These insulin caravans have been going on for years already, and people only started worrying about it when the media got wind of it, which is a byproduct of fearmongering and the demonization of disabled/chronically ill Americans as a threat to us more deserving disabled/chronically ill Canadians.

Insulin is cheap and easy to stock, and because the amounts of insulin you might need in a day to day basis varies, all pharmacies have a surplus of it, and pharamcies that see more demand for it, order more for it. Because insulin is literally a life or death medication, and that pharamacist does not want to be the one responsible for wiping out an entire town’s worth of type 1 diabetics. Americans coming to Canada to get perscriptions has been going on for decades now. This really isn’t a new thing.

And this is def not a long term solution, and most poor diabetics cant even afford to do this, but I will not stand by to let non diabetic people create panic within diabetic Canadians, and also become a threat to deseperate diabetic Americans who are in a life or death choice. America’s step up, but spreading false information just incites some xenophobic and ableist fuckery

Here’s the post that started this fuckery on tumblr