Making lemons out of lemonade

According to the Guardian (UK), Canada intends to ban most export of prescriptions to the US and other countries.

Health Minister Ujjal Dosanjh said he must ensure Canadians continue to have access to an adequate supply of safe and affordable prescription drugs and would launch initiatives, including legislative and regulatory changes, to protect the supply and safety of Canada's drugs.

The targets are internet pharmacies, which an increasing number of people in the US are using to get medicines from Canada, where they are often dramatically cheaper. But the feds, egged on by Big Pharma, have kept trying to shoot the whole practice down. The FDA said they "can't assure the safety" of meds imported from Canada. They claimed, via carefully-chosen examples, that drugs in the US are actually cheaper than those in Canada. They hinted that controlling drug prices in the US would lead to various forms of technological disaster, wrecking R&D beyond repair. None of it worked.

Which brings us to the latest announcement. It's declared intention is to assure an adequate supply of drugs for Canadians - but I can't help but suspect that what actually happened is that Ottawa capitulated to the corporate butt-licking demands from Washington once some agreement was reached on a face-saving way for the Canadians to give up.