My pharmacist told me that Vaniqa is being discontinued. Has anyone else heard this?
I just e-mailed Skin Medica and asked this question. I haven’t heard anything even close to this. Are you sure you understood what the pharmacist said?
I just received this email from them:
The company that had been distributing Vaniqa in Canada has chosen to discontinue doing so. Therefore, at the present time, Vaniqa is not available to Canadian residents.
Regards,
Marcia M. Lane
Customer Service Coordinator
They like you better than me ht2003. I e-mailed skin medica this morning and have not received a response, so I e-mailed them again hoping to understand why the distributing company decided to discontinue Vaniqa to Canadian residents. The only thing I can remotely think of is this all due to controling costs because the National Health Care System that is trying to respond to more serious problems??? Only a guess though.
Hey Dee; didn’t ya know that people just love us Canadians and our emails go to the top of the pile?! 
I imagine that the Canadian distributor probably had a royalty agreement to manufacture and distribute the product in Canada and the profit margins and sales weren’t as expected. I imagine they are a public company and therefore they must provide decent dividends to their shareholders and Vaniqa was probably dead weight. And that’s my story and I’m stickin’ to it.
I am getting one last tube from my pharmacist (expiry date Sept /08) and she is going to call around to see if she can find another store within the same chain that has some tubes with a longer expiration date. I go back to the US in December to spend the winter in the sunny south so while I’m there, I will look into ordering some tubes. Hopefully they will have a long enough shelf life that I can buy enough to last me for another year. It seems like you can pay an online doctor to write a prescription which will be cheaper than paying a doctor in the US for an office visit.
Unfortunately they do not ship to Canada. They said they can only ship to countries listed on their drop down menu and Canada is not one of them. Any other suggestions?
Do you have any friends across the border who could receive it and then ship it to you?
I never got a response from Skin Medica that I sent in late June. It would sure would be interesting to know what gives. No Vaniqa to Canada??? I don’t think it is a harmful drug or anything. Somebody or some event has sure put the brakes on Vaniqa for consumers in Canada. Canada just got a shipment of yellow cake from Iraq, but Vaniqa is not allowed?
I do . . . I actually live in the US part of the year, but, I’m concerned about asking a neighbour to ship prescriptions across the border for me. I don’t know if it is illegal to ship a prescription north of the border and I don’t want anyone to get into trouble. Any packages that cross the border have to have custom declaration paperwork with it and I don’t want someone to lie about what is in the package. I guess I need to find out from Canada customs if it is illegal for someone to ship prescriptions to me.
A pharmaceutical company from Spain, called Almirall bought the rights to Vaniqa in late 2007 as well as a couple of other products from the company distributing Vaniqa in Canada (Shire). It seems they have decided not to keep distributing it in Canada. That is why it is no longer available. Perhaps it will eventually come back.
I too have tried to get vaniqa in Canada. After contacting Barrier Therapeutics, Inc they did tell me they no longer make vaniqa for canadian distribution but could not give me a reason why. I contacted Vaniqa directly and they also could not provide me with a reason why canada can not recieve Vaniqa.
“Barrier Therapeutics, Inc. (NASDAQ: BTRX), Princeton, N.J., a pharmaceutical company developing products in the field of dermatology, has acquired the right to distribute VANIQA® (eflornithine hydrochloride) Cream, 13.9% in Canada from Shire Pharmaceutical Contracts Limited. VANIQA® is currently the only prescription product approved by Health Canada for slowing the growth of unwanted facial hair in women.” - August 2005