I want your input. Are drugs from Canada safe or not?

And I don't mean prescriptions you get at a regular Canadian pharmacy you walk into off the street. I mean prescriptions you get at an online Canadian pharmacy like CanadaDrugs.com. Safe or not? (Oh, and don't be fooled by some reports online that CanadaDrugs is a fraud, it was actually an online business of a similar name that was a fake prescription drug service.)

I ask because I spent another lovely day with my doctor yesterday discussing what we could do to work around the fact that Blue Cross Blue Shield cut me off for the rest of the year because I've had too many prescriptions this year (and I've hard even been sick). There is nothing as fun as having your doctor look at your chart and say "oh that's right, you don't have insurance," and then she leaves the room to get you a bag of free sample drugs, making you feel like a welfare queen. You see, the drug she wanted to prescribe - there is no generic, there is no alternative - costs $350 a month, and Blue Cross only lets me buy $1500 in prescriptions a year, so that means I could take care of lungs 4 months a year, and just choke the other 8.

I still need to call Blue Cross and find out exactly what happened. Why did this year, for the first time in 11 years, I suddenly hit my "cap" for how many prescriptions I can buy, when I don't think I was any sicker this year than before? I'd also like to know, when my Blue Cross premiums go up between 10% and 20% a year, does my "cap" go up 10% to 20% too?

But the reason I'm writing this post, in addition to making clear that we'd better address health care reform in the Obama administration, and we'd better focus on doing a lot more than just insuring the uninsured (cuz I got news for you, I don't think the newly-insured are going to have the money to pay for $350 prescriptions out of their own pockets), but no, I'm writing this post to find out if online Canadian pharmacies, where the drugs are a LOT cheaper than in US online pharmacies, are safe. Some examples in US dollars of US drugs and Canadian generics (I'm not necessarily taking any of these, these are just examples of popular drugs):

Vytorin 10/20, 30 pills
Drugstore.com (US): $108.62 (90 pills, $308.81)
CanadaDrugs.com: $67.34 (90 pills, $184.02)

Advair 60 500-50
Drugstore.com: $271.97
CanadaDrugs.com: $117.60

Lipitor, 20 mg, 30 pills
Drugstore.com: $119.99
CanadaDrugs.com: $47.08

Nexium, 40mg, 30 pills
Drugstore.com: $154.99
CanadaDrugs.com: $73.31

And US insurance does cover the Canadian purchase (depending on your insurance, of course).

I did a little digging, after reading the reader comments to my previous posts on this topic, and got a bit confused. Some folks recommended CanadaDrugs.com, for example. Well here's the problem. After doing a little digging, I found a number of suggestions that many online Canadian pharmacies aren't really "Canadian." They're businesses in developing countries that simply have an online Canadian footprint. What's worse, the drugs come from pretty much anywhere - e.g., Turkey, the Bahamas, India, and more.

I don't mean to be a snob, but this is stuff I'm swallowing, I want to know it's safe. I want to know it's effective.

In the past, I've been amazed at the intellectual firepower out there among our readers. We have literally experts in everything. So help me out folks, and help out everyone else who is reading this blog. Please weigh in in the comments and tell me about these online pharmacies. Are they safe? Are they selling real drugs? Does it matter if the drugs come from developing countries where you wouldn't even drink the water? I know there are some Canadian online pharmacy certification services, and sites like CanadaDrugs are "certified," but what exactly are they certifying? Do they know how the drugs are being made in Turkey? Are they certifying that the drugs in Turkey and the Bahamas and India are up to Canadian standards (and American standards)?

I have searched the Net up and down for answer. I can't find them. Our own FDA warns against using such sites, but then again, our FDA is in the hands of the American drug companies.

Some of you are experts on this. Please weigh in in the comments and tell us the truth. It's easy to comment now, just click the "comments" button under the title of this post, and it will bring you to a box where you can enter any pseudonym or real name you choose, and I think it asks for an email address (but we don't keep it, so don't worry), and then write your comment and publish it. It will appear underneath my post on that page. No registration required any longer to comment, it's easy, so please weigh in. I think this is a discussion that will benefit a LOT of people.

Thanks. JOHN