If, in the past, you ordered prescription drugs from Canada and have had trouble receiving them since November 2005, your life is about to get easier and your drugs cheaper again.

“The federal government will stop seizing small amounts of lower-priced prescription medications mailed from Canada.”

- The New York Times, 4 October 2006

“Small amounts” is roughly a 90-day supply that Americans may now import beginning Monday, 9 October.

The change in policy came about, according to Customs and Border Protection agency spokeswoman, Lynn Hollinger, due to political pressure from Congress and complaints from citizens who have not been receiving drugs they purchased since the seizure policy went into effect on 17 November 2005.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration will now resume oversight of the importation of prescription drugs which had been transferred to the Customs agency when the crackdown began.

Of course, there are objections and you can guess from whom:

“Ken Johnson, a senior vice president for the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, said the trade group remains ‘adamantly opposed to any attempts that would relax importation of drugs into this country outside the FDA safety system.

“’We shouldn’t be playing Russian roulette with people’s health,’ Johnson said. ‘We know that counterfeit drugs are pouring into Canada from countries like Thailand, China and Pakistan.’”

- Washington Post, 5 October 2006

You can believe Mr. Johnson or not, but somehow I think we would have heard if people are dying or getting sick from counterfeit drugs. The only real reason to ban importation of less expensive drugs from Canada is to preserve the pharmaceutical companies' higher profits in the U.S. Canada’s national health system, unlike the U.S. Medicare program, negotiates with the big pharmas which keeps prices low enough that even with shipping costs, American consumers can better afford their drugs.

Importing prescription drugs from other countries remains illegal and the new policy of non-enforcement of the law could be reversed at any time on a whim of Congress, as is being done now. The timing of the switch in policy is noteworthy: just as millions of Medicare beneficiaries are hitting the “doughnut hole” during which they pay one hundred percent of their drug costs and when the congressional elections are a month away. You do the math.

But that’s just politics. There is another question of larger moral significance. The U.S. Congress, in lifting the drug seizure policy, is giving Americans permission to wink at the law. Yes, we know it’s illegal, say our lawmakers, but instead of rescinding the law, we are allowing you to break it without penalty.

It doesn’t take any imagination to know what Randy Cohen, “The Ethicist” columnist in the Sunday New York Times Magazine, would say: Breaking the law is wrong. We are a country founded on the rule of law, not of individuals, and even if the law doesn’t work as perfectly as we would like it to all the time, it is respect for the law that safeguards us from tyranny.

If purchasing drugs from Canada makes a difference between having food, heat and medications or having to choose among them, breaking a law that was conceived by a corrupt Congress to benefit already obscenely rich corporations would appear to be the only available solution.

It is important morally, however, to not fool ourselves about what we are doing, and also to remember - especially on election day, 7 November - who put us in the position of being forced to break the law.