Purchasing pills online may seem more convenient than visiting the doctor’s office and waiting in line at the pharmacy, but physicians warn that buyers should exercise caution when choosing a Web site.
Dozens of Web sites with names like www.buypillsonline.net and www.drugspill.com offer customers prescription pills like Prozac and Viagra without a doctor’s consent, which is potentially very dangerous, said Ben Douglas, medical director at the University Health Center.
“Some sites sell things they’re not actually labeled to be,” said Douglas. “You might be ordering some birth control pills that could turn out to be a placebo.”
A 2007 Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention revealed that unintentional poisoning deaths rose 62.5 percent from 1999 to 2004. Previous studies showed that overdoses of prescription drugs, especially prescription painkillers, were the driving forces behind the increase.
“There’s no quality assurance that what you buy is safe,” said Douglas.
Buying pills online doesn’t just pose a health risk, Douglas said; ordering prescription drugs without a doctor’s approval is also illegal.
Gregg Wendland, a pharmacist at the health center, said some Web sites dance around the no-prescription problem by making customers fill out medical questionnaires before they proceed to the checkout. A certified doctor looks over the customer’s answers for allergies or medical problems the person may have; if there are none that may interfere with the pills, the doctor approves the transaction.
“That’s on very shaky legal grounds right now,” Wendland said.
Pillsforlessonline.net claims to offer “the cheapest prescription drugs on the Internet”, but Wendland said their prices for drugs like Ultram, Soma Fioricet, Prozac and Buspar are sky high.
“Fifty-one dollars for 90 pills? We sell that much for about 12,” Wendland said. “Assuming this is legal – which it’s probably not – it’s a huge misnomer.”
Wendland theorized that Internet drug companies stay afloat because the drugs they sell are “kind of sought after or addictive medicine.” Soma Fioricet, for example, is a widely abused and addictive prescription pill.
“From the legality standpoint, I don’t like that,” he said.
Although most sites offering prescription pills pose threats, customers who already have a prescription and simply want to take advantage of the Internet’s convenience do have some safer options, Wendland said.
“A lot of big-box stores have safe mail-order pharmacies online,” he said. “It does require that the patient have a relationship with the doctor already.”
Walgreens.com lets prescription-holding customers order drugs for store pickup or mail delivery. They can also set up an auto-refill schedule on the site.
Douglas said some medical insurance companies’ Web sites also have programs that allow clients to order medication.
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