Buying drugs via Canada gets tougher.

Byline: Sandi Doughton

SEATTLE _ Stan and Mary Gauthier halved their medication bills when they started buying prescription drugs by mail from Canada more than a year ago.

Now the retired Washington state couple fears the savings are about to evaporate.

Both rely on asthma inhalers and other drugs manufactured by pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline, which in March became the first drug maker to cut back sales to Canadian pharmacies that ship medicine to Americans. A second major pharmaceutical company quickly followed suit, and others are expected to do the same.

Those restrictions are beginning to choke off the supply of some drugs, which means seniors accustomed to Canadian bargains may once again have to pay higher American prices.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration and several states also have launched crackdowns on the growing number of companies that have opened stores in the United States to help seniors order Canadian drugs. Importing drugs from foreign countries is illegal, though regulators have until recently turned a blind eye toward the Canadian trade.

Collectively, the actions of the drug companies and federal and state governments may mark the beginning of the end for a phenomenon that started in the late 1990s with a trickle of seniors car-pooling across the border and has mushroomed into a nearly $1 billion-a-year enterprise serving more than a million customers.