Medication recycling: prescription drug laws transform ordinary citizens into international smugglers

The extreme high prices of prescription drugs for treating advanced-stage chronic diseases like cancer has turned honest, ordinary, everyday citizens into international smugglers who are ferrying surplus medications across international lines in order to provide the prescription drugs to their loved ones. That's because prescription drugs are cheaper in Canada and Europe than in United States, where the monopoly drug cartel hikes up prices as a justification for its research and development effort (but in reality, the money goes mostly to marketing and profits).

To arrange the drug smuggling, people are getting together online and finding out who has excess medications to spare. For example, one family whose loved one had passed away and had extra anti-cancer drugs could hook up with another family needing those drugs. Through private arrangements they could purchase those drugs or even transfer them at no cost, so that at least someone living could benefit from them. This creates an Underground Railroad of expensive prescription drugs that helps people get the medications they need.

Drug companies frown on this practice, of course. They think that once a person expires, whatever drugs they were on should be flushed down the toilet and people who need those drugs elsewhere should buy brand new drugs. As a result, we are now seeing dangerous levels of prescription drugs in human sewage and even public water supplies. There are anti-depressants now showing up in the water supply, which may explain why half the nation (or 51% to be more precise) can no longer think critically and seem to suffer from "zombie-head disorder."

But the really hilarious part about all of this is the image of tens of thousands of law-abiding citizens suddenly turning Han Solo (the smuggler from Star Wars, remember?) and being pursued by the FDA and law enforcement officials as they are smuggling prescription drugs across international lines for the benefit of their family members. Are we really going to start arresting these people and throwing them in prison alongside rapists, thieves, carjackers, and other violent criminals? I can just see it now; a person says, "What’s your crime"? "Oh! I bought prescription drugs in Canada and tried to bring them back into America". "Oh my God! that’s atrocious. What a terrible crime, how dare you steal revenues from the drug companies here in the United States? You should be executed on the spot for such a heinous crime!"

See the drug companies just don’t get this. The only reason they think these prices are affordable to Americans is because their CEOs are walking away with tens of millions of dollars a year in extra bonuses. So they think, hey! If a drug costs two hundred thousand dollars a year for a cancer patient, they should be able to afford it. Doesn't everybody get paid this much? If you ever meet with anyone working at a pharmaceutical company, just mention these two words if you really want to watch the hairs on their neck stand up: Drug recycling.

That’s right folks, it is a drug-recycling program so that perfectly good medications that one person is not using can be recycled and redirected for the use of another individual who needs the same drugs. Drug recycling is quite easy to accomplish online and it is something that strikes fair into the hearts of the pharmaceutical companies. The last thing they want is people getting together privately and swapping unused prescription drugs. Perhaps they'll pressure Congress to pass a law that says, "it is illegal to sell prescription drugs to a private individual." In fact, I think such a law already exists, meaning that it is perfectly legal to buy prescription drugs from a monopoly pharmaceutical company in the United States, but it is illegal to sell those same drugs to another family member or another person who needs the exact same prescription. Soon, it will also be a crime to purchase them from Canada and bring them into the United States.

Yet the pharmaceutical companies are, themselves, importing raw materials from other countries around the world in order to manufacture their drugs. So, at what point does the drug become "evil" in the hands of consumers? And if this is Big Pharma's policy, should not they include more instructions with the prescription drugs that they are selling to American families? Shouldn't they say, "by the way, if this drug kills the person in your family you are feeding it to, be sure to flush this drug down the toilet immediately. Do not sell it or offer it to anyone else. Because after all, if your loved one dies, we still need to make money."

This gives a whole new meaning to the term “expiration date” on prescription drugs.

What's my advice on all this? Join the Underground Railroad. Do anything and everything you can (legal, that is) to counter the monopoly power of the pharmaceutical companies. If your family member dies and leaves behind extra medications, find someone else who can benefit from the same prescriptions and give them away. If a drug company representative contacts you to try to shut you down, send their information my way. We'll go public with the whole story and turn it into national news.