Online Rogue Pharmacies Selling Prescription Drugs to Addicts

In 2006, 34 rogue online pharmacies shipped more than 100 million prescription drugs orders to people in the US.

That’s according to the Drug Enforcement Agency.

And DEA says that the majority of those drugs were pain killers such as Oxycontin and Hydrocodone.

Peter Grasso, the chief investigator at the state’s pharmacy board, says it’s unclear how many shipments came into New Hampshire.

Grasso: “It’s kind of hard to tell because when someone buys off the internet it’s usually in the privacy of their own home ……one investigation I did here two years ago I had one pharmacy in southern Florida that shipped in over 75,000 dosage units in one year...”

Grasso says internet drug shopping is more popular with addicts lately because physicians are becoming more cautious about prescribing addictive drugs.

And he says that computer-savvy teenagers know how to find the rogue sites --- using Google.

Grasso: “Go into one of your search engines and type in Vicodin for instance or Hydrocodone…and you’ll get a whole list of sites that’ll come up... Some of them will be fairly legitimate and some won’t. You know the majority probably won’t.”

Typically, the rogue sites ask consumers to provide a credit card number and fill out a medical questionnaire.

They contract with licensed doctors from around the world who review those questionnaires online and then write prescriptions.

They don’t interact with the patient at all – and doctors are paid as much as $25 dollars per order.

The prescriptions are then sent to legitimate pharmacies where they are filled and shipped.

Philip Bradley is an assistant attorney general with the Department of Justice.

He says DEA has shut down some rogue pharmacies – but legal loopholes hamper investigations and prosecutions.

Bradley: “They do sometimes run into states in which this practice is actually legal. There’s no requirement that a prescription be based on a valid physician-patient relationship that includes an in-person medical examination. So in those states, and New Hampshire is presently one of them, what the rogue internet pharmacy is doing is technically legal.”
Hydrocodone, also called Vicodin, appears to be the most popular narcotic obtained on the web.

A 2006 survey sponsored by the National Institutes of Health showed that nearly 10% of high school seniors and 3% of 8th graders report using Vicodin to get high at least once that year.

State legislators are considering a bill that would require that prescriptions be based on a real patient-physician relationship.

Representative Cindy Rosenwald from Nashua sponsored the bill.
She says the legislation, if passed, would help investigators work with local law enforcement.

Rosenwald: “Fully one-third of people who do abuse prescription pain killers are getting these drugs either from drug dealers or from the Internet. So there is evidence from a scientific peer-reviewed journal that internet pharmacy shopping is a real problem.”

She added that the law would not affect legitimate online pharmacies.

Mathea Falco, the president of Drug Strategies, a non-profit think tank in Washington D.C., applauds that legislation -- as a first step.

But she worries that investigations will stop at the US border. The majority of rogues operate outside the US, she says.

And the prescribing doctors have been identified in Florida, Puerto Rico,
Colorado, Israel, Pakistan and elsewhere.

Falco believes that the only way to make a dent in the global network is to follow the money – starting with credit card companies.

Falco: “Specifically to go after payment methods so that you can’t just click on I’ll pay with master card or visa or paypal - because if there is not an easy payment method those sales will have to go down.”

Falco adds that there aren’t enough resources to make a dent in the global network without chasing that money.

For NHPR News, I’m Dianne Finch