5,000 Websites Unlawfully Selling Prescription Drugs Online
By Anna Johnson on January 5th, 2010According to the National Association of Boards of Pharmacy (NABP) there are now over 5,000 Internet drug outlets selling prescription drugs outside of U.S. pharmacy laws and practice standards.
NABP found that 96 percent (5,008) of the 5,231 Internet drug outlets it had assessed since the May 2008 launch of its Internet drug outlet review program, were not complying with basic criteria for legitimate pharmacy practice.
Listing these vendors as ‘Not Recommended’ on the NABP website, the organization’s assessment found, among other things, that:
- More than 75 percent (4,029) dispense drugs without a valid prescription.
- More than half (2,762) accept a brief online questionnaire in place of a prescription.
- Nearly half (2,436) do not provide any physical address. According to the World Health Organization, more than 50 percent of medicines purchased over the Internet from sites that conceal their physical address are counterfeit.
- Nearly 20 percent (956) do not have secure sites that protect patients’ personal and financial information.
Said NABP President Gary A. Schnabel:
“There is a common misconception that prescription medications purchased from any Web site calling itself a pharmacy are safe. Patients have grown to trust prescription medications in the US because the manufacturing and supply systems are tightly regulated to ensure safety. What many patients fail to realize, however, is that when buying medications from unknown sources online, those safeguards vanish, and the odds of getting counterfeit or substandard medication rise substantially.”
