Online Pharmacies Facilitate Addiction   - 4,227 Views, 2 Comments

Summary: Here's an interesting angle to the proliferation of online "pharmacies" - you know those places which have a doctor "on staff", so you can contact them, get a prescription for the medication of your choice, and then purchase said medication from them. There ...

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Here’s an interesting angle to the proliferation of online “pharmacies” - you know those places which have a doctor “on staff”, so you can contact them, get a prescription for the medication of your choice, and then purchase said medication from them.

There is a strong case to be made that these “pharmacies” actually facilitate, if not leads to, addiction to prescription medication.

A San Antonio television station, WOAI, covering this story interviewed “Linda”, who confessed that “It got to the point where I was spending $800 a month on drugs.” Linda explained that it was an addiction made possible by easy access to drugs on the internet, and added “I used almost all the pharmacies on the Internet. I mean I would check out each one. It got to the point that, you know, I was running out of pharmacies to get my medication from. So, it was a sad situation.”

According to the report, there are at least 350 online “pharmacies” which do not require you to have a prescription in hand in order to obtain prescription drugs from them. Indeed, the television station’s reporter went online to see whether a recent crackdown on these pharmacies had made it any more difficult to acquire the drugs. She reported that “Within minutes, we were able to purchase the addictive tranquilizer Valium and the powerful pain medication Vicodin. In about 3 weeks, the Valium arrived at the post office sent to us by someone named Jorge Duarte from Argentina. That’s why enforcement is so difficult. Many of the internet pharmacy sites are based in other countries where selling drugs without a prescription is legal.”

For those of you reading this and saying “Cool, I gotta try this”, remember that as often as not the medications are not the ones actually manufactured by the well-known pharmaceutical manufacturer - indeed they can be knock-offs made with dangerous formulas.

In otherwords, kids, don’t try this at home.

Online Pharmacies Facilitate Addiction

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2 Comments »

  1. Wish I had $800 a month in my pocket to buy medications

    Comment by ZacOz — 2/11/2005 @ 2:13 am

  2. I think I must get a spam email from almost all of those 350 pharmacies each day! ;o) But on a serious note, drug addiction can lead people into real trouble and having prescription drugs on tap via the internet is just another contribution to this problem.

    Comment by Drug Addiction Information — 1/13/2008 @ 10:56 am

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 This article first appeared on 2/10/2005
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