Seniors buy drugs from Canada in two primary ways: either over the internet or on bus trips into Canada. Some companies sell safe drugs and others sell seconds in plastic bags. It is difficult for buyers to determine what they are getting. Some companies give buyers a prescription drug that is the same as theirs but simply has a different Canadian name. Other times buyers will receive a generic that is approved in Canada but not in the United States. These may or may not be dangerous, and certain generic medications create different reactions than their brand-name counterparts.

Canada does have a system, Health Canada, that verifies prescription drugs and how they are made, like the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in the United States. As a result, buying drugs from a Canadian pharmacy similar to a pharmacy in the United States is generally safe. Although the FDA frowns on buying drugs in other countries, it doesn’t prosecute people who buy a few prescriptions for personal use.

The problem comes with buying Canadian drugs online because users on the internet can’t see the place that their drugs are coming from. There are many prescription drug counterfeiters who create a website and put a Canadian leaf or flag on their site in hopes that unsuspecting users will immediately believe them to be a Canadian pharmacy and buy their drugs. Sometimes these counterfeiters are the same organizations that send spam about cheap prescription drugs to e-mail boxes.

As with any online drug purchasing, when buying from a Canadian pharmacy it is important to look for a professional-looking site with a name, phone number and address. Reputable sites usually ask users to fax their prescriptions and provide a charge card number online. They provide various services; in some instances, a doctor actually calls buyers for consultations. Some also allow buyers to set up automatic refills. These are generally the real pharmacies that also happen to have web sites.