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FROM: THE NATIONAL POST NEWSPAPER

http://www.canada.com/national/natio...83b1bc4-1f44-4
10a-9cb2-79d01c60f0a8

Natives Eye Pill Trade

Prairie bands hope to sell cheap medicine in casinos

Tom Blackwell
National Post


February 18, 2005


Indian bands in Manitoba and neighbouring Minnesota are talking about using
their special ''sovereign'' status to trade prescription drugs across the
border, possibly to be sold at pharmacies located in native-run casinos in the
United States.

Casinos are seen by some as excellent locations to dispense pharmaceuticals
because of their large clientele of the elderly and ill, also the prime market
for cheaper Canadian prescription medicine.

As they battle federal authorities in the United States over the trade in
drugs from Canada, both the Governor of Minnesota and a prominent congressman
from the state have endorsed the idea of using Indian bands as a conduit.

The politicians' hope is that American aboriginal groups could skirt the U.S.
Food and Drug Administration's ban on importing medicine from Canada and
other countries.

"Some of the tribes are looking at feasibility studies. I think it is a very
serious possibility," Bryan Anderson, spokesman for Rep. Gil Gutknecht, said
yesterday.

"This would be one way to get around some of the FDA's opposition, to provide
pharmaceuticals at a lower cost to American consumers."

Mr. Gutknecht, a Republican, told reporters in Washington earlier that he
could envision a native pharmacy being set up in a casino-hotel complex and
predicted that "this could be as big as their gambling business."

Floyd Jourdain, chairman of the Red Lake Tribal Council, acknowledged in an
interview that a likely location for a pharmacy would be near the tribe's Seven
Clans Casino, because it is the most accessible part of the reservation land
to outside visitors. He said the importation of drugs is being discussed with
Canadian aboriginal groups as part of a broader plan to resurrect the kind of
trade that held sway in the region long before Europeans arrived and imposed
an international border.

Mr. Jourdain said the bands were negotiating before Minnesota politicians
took an interest. "We basically believe we are operating as two countries within
two countries," he said.

"We want to do what's within our rights as two aboriginal entities.... If
there is an opportunity for us to operate and conduct commerce without certain
restrictions that are placed on the citizens of the United States and Canada, we
would like to seize that opportunity."

A spokesman for the Dakota Plains First Nation in Manitoba told the
Minneapolis Star Tribune his group came up with the idea of exporting pharmaceutical
products and is quoted as saying the casino, with its clientele of "elderly and
chronics," would be an ideal site for a pharmacy to sell Canadian drugs.

The state of Minnesota already runs a Web site that directs residents to
approved Internet pharmacies in Canada, but Governor Tim Pawlenty has voiced
concern that the state's service could one day be shut down by the Food and Drug
Administration.

The Governor, a Republican, has discussed the idea of co-operating with
Indian groups to import drugs into the United States, probably through arrangements
with bands on the Canadian side of the border.

He believes "this could be something interesting that we should take a look
at," Brian McClung, his press secretary, said yesterday.

Cody Wiberg, the state's pharmacy manager, said the FDA told the state of
California in 2003 it did not believe Indian tribes would be exempt from the
anti-importation laws.

But he said the state's lawyers have yet to examine the issue in detail to
determine whether the FDA's interpretation is correct.

"They [aboriginal groups] do have some sovereign status, so I think the hope
or the theory is they would be allowed to do things the FDA says the state
can't do," Mr. Wiberg said.

"They may be able to use that sovereign status to sort of escape the
enforcement of the FDA."

Another Minnesota native community, the White Earth Tribal Council, is also
looking at the idea and has hired a consulting company to do a feasibility
study into it, said Gary Padrta, a spokesman for the council.

Meanwhile, the state of Maine is in negotiation with an Indian tribe there to
import medication from Canada.

© National Post 2005

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