Man fined $7,500 for smuggling menopause cream
By STEVE BRUCE Court Reporter
Wed. Dec 9 - 4:46 AM
A Beaver Bank man has been fined $7,500 for smuggling menopause treatment cream into Canada.
Larry Beaton, who operates Larry Beaton Health Food Products, pleaded guilty Friday in New Brunswick provincial court in Woodstock to a summary charge of evading compliance under the Customs Act.
Mr. Beaton paid a Woodstock woman, Deborah Inman, to pick up packages of the progesterone-laced cream from a mailbox in Houlton, Maine, drive them across the border and ship them to Nova Scotia.
The Canada Border Services Agency caught on to the scheme last Jan. 21 when a guard in Belleville, N.B., found 36 bottles of Aim Renewed Balance body cream inside Ms. Inman’s van.
Aim is an American company that sells nutritional products. Its website features a cream called Aim Renewed Balance that contains natural progesterone and claims to help restore balance between the hormones that cause PMS and menopause.
The sale of progesterone is controlled in Canada under the federal government’s food and drug regulations. Prescriptions are required for human use.
Border agents searched Mr. Beaton’s home at 30 Gilbert St. on Feb. 3, seizing information sheets on progesterone, copies of deposit slips for Ms. Inman, bus receipts from Ms. Inman, packing slips, customer names and order information, commission statements from Aim and bottles of cream.
In pleading guilty, Mr. Beaton admitted that he illegally received 432 bottles or jars of the cream between June 2006 and January 2009. The total value of the product was more than $10,000.
The defence asked for a fine of $5,000, but Chief Judge R. Leslie Jackson accepted the Crown’s request for a $7,500 fine and gave Mr. Beaton six months to pay.
The border agency alleged in earlier court documents that Mr. Beaton and Ms. Inman had been sneaking the cream into the country since January 2005.
Ms. Inman also pleaded guilty Friday to one count of evading compliance under the Customs Act. She’ll be sentenced Jan. 19.
( sbruce@herald.ca)
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no comment I can make can do this justice.
One ? though... "Prescriptions are required for human use."
*SIGH*
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2 comments:
What a fricken joke - suing a man for trying to naturally heal, rather than make people sicker as the pharma's do. Can you imagine...regarding natural whole food as a prescription - governments and pharmacology (legal drug dealers) don't care about the wellness of people, just the money they can make from illness and keeping them ill!
I am in total agreement with you, that is why I posted the story. it was too stupid not for everyone to see.
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