Bargain shoppers run risk in Mexico

TIJUANA, Mexico – Californians shopping for cheaper prescription drugs may have gotten a break when the state Legislature voted to ease access to low-cost medicines from Canada, but south of the border, bargain-hunters can pay an unexpected, traumatic cost – time in a Mexican slammer.

Since early last year, at least 67 Americans have been jailed here for buying medicines without a prescription from a Mexican doctor. Most recently, a 53-year-old U.S. woman was arrested in Tijuana in July and spent a day in jail after buying 90 Valium tablets, a standard prescription amount, without the requisite Mexican doctor’s order.

Drug shoppers in Mexico are on the same quest for discounts that has driven many Californians to buy mail-order medications from Canada, where prices also can be dramatically lower.

Late in August, days after a group of elderly Southern Californian protesters chartered a train called the Rx Express to buy medicines in Vancouver, B.C., the California Legislature gave final approval to a package of bills allowing cheaper drug imports from Canada. The legislation is still being considered by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.

To the south, thousands of Americans, mostly senior citizens, cross the border daily to buy prescription drugs at places such as Tijuana and Algodones on the California border, Nogales south of Arizona and Ciudad Juarez opposite El Paso. They are pursuing savings of up to 75 percent on medicines ranging from antibiotics and antidepressants to heart medication and chemotherapy agents.

Mexican druggists who sell to Americans without a prescription also are breaking the law, but the police more frequently target the customers, knowing they are easy arrests and in many cases will be only too willing to pay bribes of hundreds of dollars to avoid jail.

Facing a sharp decline in tourism in recent months, some Tijuana pharmacists are mounting a campaign to warn visitors of the hazards of buying drugs without prescriptions – and to repair Tijuana’s image.

“Americans come here with no idea that they need a prescription, a Mexican prescription, to get their medicines,” said Ignacio Romo Calderon, president of the Tijuana Pharmacists Association.

“We are trying to educate the tourists because (the arrests) have given the city a bad name.”

Pharmacies have multiplied in Tijuana to more than 1,300 – three times the number in San Diego, with roughly the same population – as Mexico becomes known as an alternative to cost-conscious U.S. consumers.

Law-abiding druggists along Pharmacy Row in Tijuana will either refuse to sell the drugs or send consumers to one of the many doctor’s offices where physicians are known to write prescriptions for $40.

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