Buying prescription drugs online has its perks, but hidden dangers lurk

Buying prescription drugs online has its perks, but hidden dangers lurk

By BECKY PIEDEL

Date published: 8/29/2004

For anyone--dealers, addicts and children included--purchasing these and other drugs online and prescription-free is as easy as point and click.

Online pharmacies offer customers a convenient, private and oftentimes cheaper alternative to the typical corner drugstore.

The elderly or disabled can order their medicines 24 hours a day without leaving the cozy confines of their homes. Customers who are too embarrassed to order certain medications can do so without coming face to face with a pharmacist.

While the perks might convince some customers to make their purchases online, buyers should beware. According to government agencies, buying drugs from some online pharmacies can pose serious threats to your health.

The dangers include the following:

Drug information, side effects, dosage and warnings are often not included. When they are, they can be in a different language.

Online sites don't always ask for a patient's medical history.

Many sites don't offer a pharmacist for consultation.

Some sites don't package or handle drugs properly, which can render them ineffective.

The prescription you get might not be the real thing, or you might not get it at all.

"A drug could be codeine but it could also be sugar," Ukrop's pharmacist Lori Milton said.

The typical e-mail inbox likely contains an overflow of offers for cheap prescription drugs, and a Google or Yahoo search can produce thousands of hits on a single drug name. A Google search for "Vicodin" yields nearly 1.5 million hits; one for "Vicodin without a prescription" produces more than 150,000.

Officials from the pharmaceutical industry and the Food and Drug Administration refer to sites offering drugs without a prescription as rogue e-pharmacies. The number of rogue pharmacy Web sites is reaching epidemic proportions, as is the selection of drugs they offer.

Rogue e-pharmacies are the most potentially dangerous, according to the FDA and Drug Enforcement Administration. These sites offer an extensive stock of prescription drugs--including narcotics, mood-altering drugs and drugs for sexual dysfunction, acne and weight loss--with no questions asked.

Although laws prohibit the sale of drugs online without a prescription, the vastness of the Internet has made regulation nearly impossible.

The state boards of pharmacy regulate online pharmacies in the United States. The FDA and DEA are partners in regulating foreign-based sites and practitioners.

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Date published: 8/29/2004