It takes the US Food and Drug Administration a long time to approve most new prescription medications. It takes even longer for this same organization to approve some medications for over-the-counter use. This is not always a bad thing, and it may have protected the public from drugs with dire side-effects or that really were not effective.
Sometimes the latest medication is available in Mexico or Canada because they may have shorter lead-times to get new prescriptions to market. Americans have tapped our northern and southern neighbors as a sort of black market. Some folks might run across the border to pick up new drugs. Others might even be able to order a supply off of the Internet from Mexican and Canadian online pharmacies without ever leaving their house.
Smugglers also bring some of these prescription medications across the border, though the government has been cracking down on that quite a bit. It might be much easier to capture a smuggler with a truck full of illegal medications than it is to catch one individual with a pill box in his pocket.
Some of these medications actually are legal in the US, but require a doctor's prescription. It is possible to walk into a Mexican pharmacy, for example, and simply purchase these medications with no prescription. In addition, many border towns have clinics set up to supply US visitors with what they ask for with few questions asked. Valium, for example, requires a prescription in Mexico. But it is very easy to get a prescription from one of these border clinics.
It is a crime to carry these medications back across the border, but it happens all of the time. There is, indeed, a thriving black market for prescription medications, between Canada, Mexico, and the US.
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