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Bogus Canadian Internet Pharmacies: How to Protect Yourself

Tue, 06/14/2005 - 12:00am — Karen Stevenson
Description: 

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) commissioned a study from a company called Cyveillance which states that of 11,000 "Canadian" Internet pharmacy sites they researched, most just redirect users to 1,099 sites that actually sell prescription drugs, and of the 1,009 sites that sell "Canadian" drugs, only 214 are actually based in Canada.

This raises many troubling questions and should justifiably frighten anyone buying drugs online, but little futher information was provided. I was not able to find any information about the study on the FDA web site at all, and only the press release is available on the Cyveillance site. The press release has been reproduced verbatim on numerous online and offline news outlets, but I only found one article, a story by Brian Krebs of the Washington Post, that seems to have dug further into the story (see it at http://www.washingtonpost.com/). Krebs tried to get additional information about the study, but was not able to find out which drug sites are actually located in Canada and was told by a FDA spokeperson that revealing that information would give Americans a "false sense of security" and that "as long as shipping medications into the United States remains illegal, the agency would continue to refuse to work with any entity supporting that activity."

I thought it would helpful to provide some tips to try to avoid problems when buying prescription drugs on the Internet:

1) Don't follow links in emails that offer Canadian drugs. One of the few bits of information in the press release was the fact that most of the bogus sites are only reachable via spam email links and cannot be found via legitimate search engine searches.

2) Many legitimate American sites will be be registered with the Verified Internet Pharmacy Practice service (VIPPS). Check their list at http://www.nabp.net/vipps/. Legitimate Canadian pharmacy sites can be found at the Canadian International Pharmacy Association (CIPA) at http://www.ciparx.ca/. If you don't see the site on one of these lists, you probably should avoid it.

3) CIPA also offers a list of tips on their web site to help ensure you are dealing with a legitimate Canadian pharmacy business, including suggestions to look for a Canadian Provincial pharmacy license number and a Canadian phone number (and to call that number to be sure it is legitimate). Consumers should also expect legitimate sites to require a prescription from a licensed physician.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) commissioned a study from a company called Cyveillance which states that of 11,000 "Canadian" Internet pharmacy sites they researched, most just redirect users to 1,099 sites that actually sell prescription drugs, and of the 1,009 sites that sell "Canadian" drugs, only 214 are actually based in Canada.

This raises many troubling questions and should justifiably frighten anyone buying drugs online, but little futher information was provided. I was not able to find any information about the study on the FDA web site at all, and only the press release is available on the Cyveillance site. The press release has been reproduced verbatim on numerous online and offline news outlets, but I only found one article, a story by Brian Krebs of the Washington Post, that seems to have dug further into the story (see it at http://www.washingtonpost.com/). Krebs tried to get additional information about the study, but was not able to find out which drug sites are actually located in Canada and was told by a FDA spokeperson that revealing that information would give Americans a "false sense of security" and that "as long as shipping medications into the United States remains illegal, the agency would continue to refuse to work with any entity supporting that activity."

I thought it would helpful to provide some tips to try to avoid problems when buying prescription drugs on the Internet:

1) Don't follow links in emails that offer Canadian drugs. One of the few bits of information in the press release was the fact that most of the bogus sites are only reachable via spam email links and cannot be found via legitimate search engine searches.

2) Many legitimate American sites will be be registered with the Verified Internet Pharmacy Practice service (VIPPS). Check their list at http://www.nabp.net/vipps/. Legitimate Canadian pharmacy sites can be found at the Canadian International Pharmacy Association (CIPA) at http://www.ciparx.ca/. If you don't see the site on one of these lists, you probably should avoid it.

3) CIPA also offers a list of tips on their web site to help ensure you are dealing with a legitimate Canadian pharmacy business, including suggestions to look for a Canadian Provincial pharmacy license number and a Canadian phone number (and to call that number to be sure it is legitimate). Consumers should also expect legitimate sites to require a prescription from a licensed physician.