Local outlet offers drugs from Canada

Tucked away under a green sign in a small Wheaton shopping center, Value Rx of Canada LLC orders cheap prescription drugs from Canada for walk-in customers.

The storefront pharmacy-processing center helps mainly senior citizens buy up to 3,000 types of prescription drugs from Canada that are less expensive than those in the United States.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which regulates U.S. prescription drugs, is trying to shut down processing centers like Value Rx, saying they violate federal law.

Dennis C. Parker, who owns the shop and knows most customers on a first-name basis, opened the center in January 2004 as a temporary solution to skyrocketing drug prices.

“I am a compassionate young senior and doing everything I can to help my fellow seniors,” he said on a recent morning at the small office, a large Canadian flag draped behind his desk.

The store is one of a few in the mid-Atlantic region and appears to be the only one in Montgomery County, although county officials would not confirm if there are other processing centers.

Still, Mr. Parker said the business “is not the answer” to providing senior citizens affordable prescription drugs long term.

U.S. consumers — primarily senior citizens — are increasingly turning to Canadian prescription-drug re-importation as a way to buy cheaper medicine, despite efforts in the United States and Canada to stop the drugs from coming into the United States.

Mr. Parker orders the medications for his more than 1,800 customers from a Toronto pharmacy company, Rx of Canada Inc.

Consumers generally save 50 percent to 60 percent per prescription, resulting in savings of $73 to $600. Each order is for a three-month supply with a processing and shipping charge of $15 per order.

Mr. Parker said he has had up to 16 prescriptions for one order.

He started the business after paying $900 for a three-month supply of eight prescriptions for his 84-year-old mother, Verna, who had suffered a heart attack. Mrs. Parker is now up to nine prescriptions, for which Mr. Parker pays about $300 total for a three-month supply.

“I thought, there is no way any senior citizen is able to afford this,” said the 60-year-old Silver Spring resident.

He went to Canada to shop around for a pharmacy that would ship FDA-approved prescription drugs to the United States.

One reason he chose Wheaton was to be near the 9,000-resident senior community Leisure World of Maryland.

Story Continues →