In the past if you had a prescription you could bring them in if they were approved for use in the US. I've known a lot of people who brought in drugs they didn't even have a prescription for (things like Cipro, corticosteroids, dermatological stuff) and they weren't even checked. They're after things that can be abused.
Prescription drugs are cheaper in most other countries. The drug companies have a "progressive" pricing scheme--if you can pay more as a society you pay more. In some countries the price covers cost of production and shipping, not much more. It's both business and public principles at play--if you leave the market open, black market drugs will patent-breaking production will become common and it's expensive to defend against intellectual property crimes. Moreover, not selling the drugs (and defending property) would be seen as immoral; it's already a problem with drug companies not producing drugs for sale in other countries when they'd only lose money. People usually have higher standards for what others should do than what they should do themselves.
Mean household income in Mexico is around $10k/year. In the US, it's around $70k/year (median is around $50k). Except drugs in Mexico to cost less. Expect medical services in general to cost less, including the wages for doctors and nurses.
But drugs are also cheaper in other countries because of differences in regulation. US FDA regs can increase some drug costs, and cheaper knockoffs are often available in other countries made under less rigorous regulatory schemes. It may mean contaminants, it may mean that what you get isn't at the strength shown on the label.
Note that "I'm going to take my business for services out of the country because it's cheaper and I want to save money" is a common thing to say in some parts of the SW. When a person does it, well, it's just being prudent. If 10k people do it, it's 10k people being prudent and a sign that things are too expensive here so they're taking their traffic elsewhere. It's still a good thing. After all, we all like to save a dime, whether your income is $10k/year or $100k/year.
When a company does it it's called "off-shoring" and it means American jobs are being exported. In the case of an individual going, no big deal--a doctor loses some revenue. If 10k people go, it means a few doctors, some nurses, and some clerical assistants lose their jobs, even if that may be spread out in a way that you can't point to the practice being put out of business. Now, we have a bit of a doctor shortage in many areas and nobody would balk at lowering doctors' wages. But we don't have a shortage of clerical staff. It's the same effect as a small company off-shoring, or a large company offshoring just one aspect of its in-house workforce.
People often have higher standards for what others should do.
We'll leave aside that Mexico also has a bit of a doctor shortage, and every person from the US who goes there for treatment helps keep wages high for doctors and keeps doctors bunched up close to the border, helping to make the doctor shortage more acute in other, lower-paying areas.
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