Four years after Boston’s mayor, Tom Menino, bucked federal regulators and made Beantown the biggest city to offer low-cost Canadian prescription drugs to employees and retirees, the program has fizzled, never having attracted more than a few dozen participants, The Boston Globe reports.

In July, the Canadian supplier, Total Care Pharmacy of Winnipeg, notified city officials it was terminating its deal because there were few participants. When the last Canadian drugs are shipped to Boston retirees in December, it will mark the quiet end to an initiative that generated headlines, the paper writes. City Hall blamed its demise on a lack of interest from city retirees eligible to participate.

Most city and state programs have died down, after Springfield, Massachusetts began the trend in 2003 to great fanfar, according to Gabriel Levitt of PharmacyChecker.com, which helps patients find safe Canadian pharmacies online. But two years ago, Springfield began saving more money by enrolling employees and retirees in the state’s Group Insurance Commission, and ended its program.

The falling interest in Canadian supplies was driven by Medicare Part D, which provides seniors a lower-cost alternative for domestic drugs, according to Levitt. “You see a diminishing market of seniors who are shopping from the Canadian online pharmacies,” he tells the paper. “Add to that, the competitive prices of generic drugs in the US and a growth of generic drug programs.”

Boston’s Menino launched his pilot drug reimportation program in July 2004, less than a week before Boston hosted the Democratic National Convention and about a year after Springfield started the trend. The city made the Canadian option available to a group of about 2,500 city retirees, the Globe writes.

But while Springfield officials said they saved as much as $3 million a year by making Canadian drugs available to all city employees and retirees, Boston saved, for example, just $4,300 in 2006 on a total of 73 prescriptions. When Total Care decided to end its relationship with the city, only 16 Boston retirees were still participating.

Menino press secretary Dorothy Joyce said the program’s end was not for lack of effort by the mayor. “The mayor himself went out to the neighborhoods to present it, and he was a strong supporter of this program,” she tells the paper. “In the end, people decided this wasn’t what they wanted.”

Springfield’s former mayor Mike Albano is not surprised Boston’s effort floundered. Springfield waived the copayment on Canadian meds as an incentive for its employees and retirees to participate. Boston participants who chose the Canadian option still had a copayment, although it was less for a three-month supply than the city’s regular plan.

“There was really no incentive in Boston that I could see other than to help the city save some costs on prescription medication,” Albano, now a consultant to political campaigns and businesses, tells the paper. “I’m surprised even 16 people participated.”

Boston City Council member Michael Ross believes the city was forced to abandon the program because of federal pressure. The FDA strongly opposed efforts by cities and states to offer Canadian prescription drugs, saying the suppliers were not regulated by the US and drug safety could not be guaranteed.

“We’re being forced to buy into a system that rewards drug companies and punishes individual payers and municipalities and taxpayers,” Ross, who has called for a hearing on what went wrong with program, tells the Globe. “The idea was to grow the program, but the program was never allowed to get off the ground.”