Bus Stop
By: Source: AARP Bulletin Today Date Posted: 2004-06-10 17:25:00-04:00
Dick and Vada Johnson of Brooklyn Center, Minn., don't much care for the long bus rides, but, like the hundreds of other folks who climb aboard the Minnesota Senior Federation's "Rx Express," they see their two-day trips to Canada as a money-saving necessity. Last Oct. 22, their eight-hour journey home was interrupted at the U.S. border when agents of the Food and Drug Administration boarded the bus for an inspection.
The incident wasn't made public until April, when Sen. Mark Dayton (D-Minn.) wrote to the FDA to complain about it. An FDA official told the Associated Press that the inspection was "an unusual event" and he didn't expect it to happen again.
Dick Johnson recently talked with us about the experience:
My wife and I are 68, and we save about a thousand dollars a year by going to Canada to buy our prescription drugs. Other people save even more. There was a woman on a cancer drug—she got it up there for 45 cents a pill, versus $4 a pill in the United States. That tells you how ridiculous the situation is.
It isn't an easy trip. We make it enjoyable because we joke and have fun, but it's still 500 and some miles over two days. There are people who are many years older than us, and I'm sure it's a tough trip for them.
We started that day, Oct. 21, at 7:30 in the morning, and I think it was about 3:30 or 4 o'clock in the afternoon when we actually got to our destination in Canada. When we crossed the border, our group leader went into customs and declared that we were going across to buy prescription drugs. When we arrived in Winnipeg, we actually went to see a doctor, and he wrote the prescriptions. The next day we went to a pharmacy and picked them up.
That same day, when we came back across the border to Pembina, N.D., our group leader went back into customs. Then she came back and said, "The FDA is going to board the bus."
The FDA agents came on the bus like Gestapo agents. They were in black uniforms, similar to police uniforms, that said "FDA" on them. They were very somber, you know, very stern and straight-faced, and they said they wanted to see what we had. They started at the back of the bus and looked at everybody's purchases. They actually went into our bags, physically looked at the bottles, looked at you, and then moved on to the next person, working their way up to the front.
They really didn't say anything to us. It probably took 20 minutes to 30 minutes. We were all quiet. We just sat there and watched what was going on. I could see that some of the other people on the bus were very apprehensive, obviously a little shook up with what was going on. I was thinking that they might confiscate the medicines we'd purchased in Winnipeg, that we might lose what we had spent, but they didn't.
I don't think it was an accident that the FDA came on the bus, because they knew exactly what we were doing, they knew our intent. To me, it was orchestrated to scare a bunch of seniors.
You know, as people age they don't want any altercations. But we're going back to Canada in July because I have to renew my prescription. You take a stand, and that's what we're going to do.
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