June 6, 2005
If you keep going round ...
This ad appears in a recent issue of Time magazine.
My interest was piqued by the appearance of New Zealand in the ad. When you grow up in New Zealand you learn to spot a "Z" (that's Zed, not Zee, by the way) in a page of text within 5 seconds.
The point of the ad is that those warm, cuddly and cheap Canadian pharmacies might be selling you drugs from other places. Places that sound far away or dangerous! Or both. Those foreigners might kill you! Or make you sick.
It's both hilarious and insidious at the same time. Of all the countries they mention, I might be worried by pharmaceuticals from China or Vietnam. Might. I just don't know. I guess I'd trust the judgment of the Lonely Planet guides on what to do when sick in those countries.
But the other countries? Israel? Guess that conspiracy theory about all the lobbyists in Washington being intertwined must be wrong if the drug companies put up Israel as an example of places making dark, dirty, dangerous drugs.
It's insidious because the idea that drugs from foreign countries are somehow dangerous preys on all the baseless ignorance a lot of Americans have about the rest of the world.
A word to those people: to get to China, Vietnam and New Zealand it's actually quicker to head west. Don't buy drugs from companies that don't know basic geography. They're trying to scam you!
The final irony in the ad is that the reason American drugs are meant to be so much safer is because of the government approval process. So much for companies being responsible because it's in their own self-interest.