Medication from US won't be mailed to troops in Germany

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Medication from US won't be mailed to APOs in Germany
By NANCY MONTGOMERY
Stars and Stripes
Published: September 19, 2012

HEIDELBERG, Germany — Prescription medications addressed to military post office boxes in Germany soon will be flagged by U.S. postal clerks stateside and not sent.

William Kiser, the top postal officer for U.S. forces in Europe, said that U.S. post offices would stop sending the medications and a variety of other items the German government has banned or restricted from import. The target date is Jan. 1, Kiser said.

Postal clerks will match restriction codes for the items with ZIP codes.

Late last year, German authorities began confiscating mailed medications, U.S. officials said, enforcing a law the Germans say has been on the books for years.

U.S. authorities only learned recently, after packages were confiscated, that the mailed medications they thought were legal — covered under the status of forces agreement and viewed as domestic mail — were not.

The longtime practice had been encouraged by Tricare, the military health insurer, as both less expensive and more convenient, especially as more military health centers closed along with their garrisons.
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