Should You Buy Your Medications on Mexico's Border? Nancy A. Melville - Road & Travel
go to original February 3, 2014

You can see the signs before you even cross the border from the U.S. into Mexico - farmacias pitching prescription drugs for a fraction of the price you'd have to pay from where you're standing.

Travel further south into any given Mexican tourist town and it's hard to turn a corner without encountering farmacia signs touting cut-rate prices on everything from Viagra to Valium. So if it's cheap, easy and allowable, why not pick up an extra bottle of medicine that may someday come in handy?

In many cases, such bargains can indeed be worthwhile, and if you're one of the many uninsured Americans, hundreds of dollars may be saved.

Furthermore, as long as the drug isn't a controlled substance, such as a narcotic, U.S. Customs allows you to bring back as much as a three-month supply of a medication without a prescription. Even if it is a controlled substance that you want, Customs will let you bring in up to 50 dosage units without a prescription.

But that doesn't mean it's with their blessing.

In fact, most public health experts in the U.S. are united in their warnings of caveat emptor: "When it comes to going outside of the United States to buy prescription drugs, the message we really want to get to consumers is 'buyer beware'," stresses a spokesman for the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

Read the rest at Road & Travel

Photo: WorldNow

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