Online drug deals draw complaints
By Thomas Caywood / Boston Herald

As pill-pushing drug dealers move from the street corner to the Internet, treatment programs are watching an alarming increase in professionals getting hooked on prescription drugs bought online.

Percocet, Vicodin, Valium and others -- they're just a mouse click away on hundreds of shady Web sites peddling potentially dangerous and addictive medications for sale without a prescription.

It's easy, illegal and potentially deadly.

"We're very concerned because the drugs they're selling are extremely addictive and dangerous," said Carmen Catizone, executive director of the National Association of Boards of Pharmacy, a group of state pharmacy regulators.

Pharmacists complain the illicit online drug trade flourishes amid a false aura of legitimacy bestowed by public officials who publicly advocate buying prescription drugs from Canada to hold down ballooning health-care costs.

But the battle against online drug trafficking is beginning to heat up. Most Internet search engine companies have bowed to pressure to swear off ads from unlicensed online pharmacies, and Congress now is cracking down on cyber pill pushers, too.

U.S. Rep. W.J. "Billy" Tauzin, R-La., chairman of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, on Tuesday fired off letters to Visa, MasterCard, FedEx and UPS informing them that the committee is investigating "enablers of illegal Internet pharmacies."

"It's an attempt to get the credit card companies and the shippers to give us an assist in shutting down these illicit operations," Tauzin spokesman Ken Johnson said. "The problem is getting worse, and it's going to explode if we don't do something."

Dr. Punyamurtula Kishore, an addiction medicine specialist who runs a chain of drug treatment clinics in Massachusetts, said many patients in his practice scored their drugs from the Web. He's even treating a middle-aged college professor who fed her Vicodin addiction online.

"They see it like they are getting a small enough quantity that they fly under the radar," Kishore said. "People feel safe. They get a nice UPS box in the mail."

Rx-Online-Store.com, one of hundreds of similar sites, sells a bottle of 60 generic hydrocodone tablets for $145. The U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency puts the street value of the morphinelike pain killers sold under the brand name Vicodin at up to $10 a pill.

"It's a little scary. I'm certainly glad this wasn't around when I was using," said John from Dorchester, a 52-year-old recovering addict who didn't want to be identified by his full name.

He had to seek out street dealers to get the Percocet, Vicodin and other prescription drugs he used, but today they're all just a click away.

Offshore Pharmacy, a Web site that sells potentially addictive drugs such as Xanax without a prescription, boasts on its site "the patient is allowed to decide for himself, depending on the symptoms, what's right for him."

In congressional testimony earlier this year, Food and Drug Administration Associate Commissioner William Hubbard said as many as 400 Web sites, about half of them based outside the country, are selling prescription drugs illegally to U.S. consumers.

Hubbard said in a telephone interview the agency is hearing from health-care providers that abuse of controlled substances has jumped because they're so easy to buy over the Internet.

FDA and Customs inspectors can do little to stop the flood of illicit prescription drugs into the country, Hubbard told Congress, because they don't have a reliable way of knowing which parcels contain medications and, even if they did, would be overwhelmed by the volume.

But that doesn't mean Web-savvy drug abusers are safe from prosecution. DEA Special Agent Ed Childress said anybody importing a drug from outside the country without a government license is breaking a federal law, period.

Beyond breaking the law, people buying medications online to abuse or to save money are playing Russian roulette with their health, pharmacists said.

"Who's going to guarantee that product is safe and effective?" said Carmelo Cinqueonce, executive vice president of the Massachusetts Pharmacists Association.

Buymeds.com's Web site tells customers its medications come from pharmaceutical wholesalers or the manufacturer.

But Cinqueonce isn't buying that.

"Ask what state are they licensed in. They are not going to give you that information," Cinqueonce said, adding most sites don't even list an address or phone number.

Rx-Online-Store.com, for example, gives no indication where the company is based or how to contact it by phone or by mail. The Internet address it uses is registered to a company in Cyprus. Rx-Online-Store.com, Buymeds.com and several other online pharmacies didn't respond to e-mails requesting interviews.

"We've been trying to track them down. It appears that most are foreign-based," Catizone said.

(Jennifer Heldt Powell contributed to this report.)
 

Back to articles