Warmington: Canadian buys Buffalo’s supply of flu medicine for children

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This Cold War is affecting children on both sides of the border.

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Children are the biggest losers in the recent Canadian invasion of the United States, which is becoming a battle over cough syrup, not maple syrup.

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Demand for cold, flu and fever medicine in children is so high that after emptying Canadian drugstore shelves, shoppers in the country are also buying supplies at pharmacies in the Buffalo area.

This was a cross-border shopping crisis that left parents on both sides of the border empty-handed.

Tylenol, Motrin, Advil, and Tempra cough products for children are easy to find anywhere from Mexico to the Cayman Islands, but you can’t find them in Canada or western New York.

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“We still have a few chewables, but they’re all out of liquid,” says Marissa Delion of Brighton Eggert Pharmacy in North Tonawanda, New York.

Same problem across Canada. For weeks, Canadians closer to the border would simply head over to Walgreens, CVS, Duane Reid, or the legendary local pharmacies, Buffalo Pharmacies, or Bright Egerton, to purchase stock.

“It’s not that I’m not used to seeing Ontario license plates in parking lots,” said one local.

But they weren’t used to seeing Canadians wipe them out, so the New York family also skunk.

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However, Delion said imposing a purchase limit on Canadians buying stocks of cough medicine has not been discussed.

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Move on to Drake, Beyoncé, Lady Gaga, Miley Cyrus, Bruce Springsteen, Journey, The Rolling Stones, and The Who. The hottest ticket these days comes in a tiny bottle.

In first-come-first-served, winner-takes-all capitalism, bottles of the serum you want are sold on Amazon and other shopping sites for $60 a bottle, or $300 for a package of five.

What a weird time.

The country is depleting the highly over-the-counter drugs families need as public health officials in Ontario urge people to wear masks. There is not a shortage of hundreds of millions of dollars in humanitarian aid, but there is a shortage of medicines and available surgery for children.

Health Canada reported good news on Monday that the government has “secured overseas supplies of children’s acetaminophen that will be available in retail stores and local pharmacies in the coming weeks.”

Hopefully they remember to make sure stores around Buffalo have enough as well.

Had it not been for the Canadian invasion, the people there would not have faced their own peril.

We share a border, and they shared cough syrup, so it’s like neighbors refilling the shelves we emptied.