Are Online Pharmacies Fueling the Prescription Drug Abuse Epidemic?
The Ryan Haight Act of 2008 gave the DEA the power to prosecute and shut down illegal online pharmacies. So why are so many still in business?
Shutterstock
By Allison McCabe
04/23/14
Source The Fix
On the morning of February 12, 2001, Francine Haight found her 18 year old son, Ryan, lying lifeless in his bed. Francine, a nurse, tried to resuscitate her son but it was too late. Ryan was dead of a Vicodin overdose.
“I was in shock,” Francine recounts. “Just the night before, we had dinner together after he came home from work at a nearby retail store. He used my Jacuzzi tub because he said his back bothered him from lifting things at work. At midnight I had kissed him goodnight and he said ‘love you, Mom.’”
After asking Ryan’s friends about the drugs and finding out that he had purchased them on the Internet, Francine sent Ryan’s computer to the DEA. The DEA found that Ryan had purchased the Vicodin from an online pharmacy which had then delivered the drugs directly to the Haights’ home.
If you look in your spam folder, you will probably find an ad for an online pharmacy. The majority advertise Viagra and Cialis and maybe some cholesterol drugs; drugs that require prescriptions but are not controlled substances restricted by the federal government. If you dig deeper, however, you can very quickly find whatever you’re looking for.
I once tried to score on the Internet. Many years ago, mid-kick and desperate, I searched online classifieds, looking for hidden code or secret meanings in every post; I was sure I could find someone discreetly selling heroin or other strong opiates. Why wouldn’t a dealer exploit the new global access of the web? I followed a “Pain Relief, all kinds” to a trailer park in the valley. The woman who answered the door was disheveled and her place was stacked floor to ceiling with newspapers, electronics, clothing. “Do you have the money?” She asked. Turned out she didn’t have the dope, but if I gave her my money she would “make some calls.”
These days you no longer have to wait around for an unreliable dealer, forge prescriptions, doctor shop, or engage in some other hustle to score your dope. While the FBI goes after deep underground drug selling sites like Silk Road, illegal online pharmacies have sprung up on every virtual corner. All you have to do is visit a website, make your choices, give your credit card info, and you’re set with a month’s (or more) supply of Ambien, Xanax, Ritalin, or morphine.
Jennifer was addicted to Ambien. She was the kind of drug addict who would take a handful of pills, lose consciousness, and wake up on the sidewalk in the middle of the night half-dressed. Or she would walk into a favorite restaurant, sober, and find that she’d been 86’d because of some Ambien-induced behavior that she didn’t remember.
“I was getting them prescribed by three doctors with refills, but my tolerance was so high and my body needed them so I wouldn’t go into withdrawal.” Jennifer was constantly requesting early refills and she knew that her behavior was sending up red flags at the pharmacies, so last year she decided to try her luck online.
Jennifer did a search and clicked on the first online pharmacy that popped up. She placed her order and the pharmacy called her back to get her debit card info. There was no request for a prescription, no doctor’s consultation. It was as easy to order Ambien, a federally controlled schedule 4 drug, as it was to order aspirin. Jennifer’s problems getting early refills were over. “This pharmacy doesn’t care about when you order. If I ordered 200 pills on a Tuesday, I could order another 200 on that Friday. They didn’t care, they were all about the money.”
After Ryan’s death, Francine Haight found that there were hundreds of online pharmacies (as of 2013, more than 34,000) selling prescription drugs. These pharmacies were able to dispense federally controlled drugs because there was never any explicit law against it. Laws governing the distribution of controlled substances were written in the 1970s, when no one could have predicted that one day sales could be made over a computer network. Consequently the law included no explicit prohibition against online pharmacies prescribing and distributing controlled substances. If prosecutors wanted to convict, they had to rely on an implicit prohibition, and do some tricky maneuvering in order to prove that online pharmacists’ methods “fall outside the usual course of professional practice.” This argument was used successfully in Ryan Haight’s case, and the online pharmacist and associated doctor were sentenced to prison.
The Ryan Haight Act and the DEA
As a result of Ryan’s case, Congress passed the Ryan Haight Online Pharmacy Consumer Protection Act of 2008. The act went into effect in April of 2009 and states that “No controlled substance that is a prescription drug as determined under the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act may be delivered, distributed, or dispensed by means of the Internet without a valid prescription.” “Valid” means that the person writing the prescription has had at least one in-person visit with the recipient of the prescription. Also, each online pharmacy is required to list, on its homepage, the name of the affiliated pharmacist, his or her licensing info, the full name and address and phone number of the pharmacy, and a certification that the pharmacy is licensed to deliver controlled substances through the Internet.
Shortly after the Ryan Haight Act was made law, the DEA announced that the online pharmacy problem was close to being solved. According to a senior DEA official, “The Ryan Haight Act has pretty much eliminated the online business in the United States [and] the DEA hasn’t found a large number of foreign sites selling controlled substances to the U.S." In 2010, the DEA’s pharmaceutical investigations chief said that “(t)he Internet is not as big of a problem as we all think it is…especially dealing with controlled substances.” He added that he thought that the illegal pharmacies that were still in business were probably selling fake and counterfeit drugs. He went on to claim that the lack of any prosecutions (there have since been a couple of successful prosecutions, but they are drops in an ocean of illegal online pharmacies) under the Ryan Haight Act was due to the law having a successful deterrent effect.
The Ryan Haight Act of 2008 gave the DEA the power to prosecute and shut down illegal online pharmacies. So why are so many still in business?
Shutterstock
By Allison McCabe
04/23/14
Source The Fix
On the morning of February 12, 2001, Francine Haight found her 18 year old son, Ryan, lying lifeless in his bed. Francine, a nurse, tried to resuscitate her son but it was too late. Ryan was dead of a Vicodin overdose.
“I was in shock,” Francine recounts. “Just the night before, we had dinner together after he came home from work at a nearby retail store. He used my Jacuzzi tub because he said his back bothered him from lifting things at work. At midnight I had kissed him goodnight and he said ‘love you, Mom.’”
After asking Ryan’s friends about the drugs and finding out that he had purchased them on the Internet, Francine sent Ryan’s computer to the DEA. The DEA found that Ryan had purchased the Vicodin from an online pharmacy which had then delivered the drugs directly to the Haights’ home.
If you look in your spam folder, you will probably find an ad for an online pharmacy. The majority advertise Viagra and Cialis and maybe some cholesterol drugs; drugs that require prescriptions but are not controlled substances restricted by the federal government. If you dig deeper, however, you can very quickly find whatever you’re looking for.
I once tried to score on the Internet. Many years ago, mid-kick and desperate, I searched online classifieds, looking for hidden code or secret meanings in every post; I was sure I could find someone discreetly selling heroin or other strong opiates. Why wouldn’t a dealer exploit the new global access of the web? I followed a “Pain Relief, all kinds” to a trailer park in the valley. The woman who answered the door was disheveled and her place was stacked floor to ceiling with newspapers, electronics, clothing. “Do you have the money?” She asked. Turned out she didn’t have the dope, but if I gave her my money she would “make some calls.”
These days you no longer have to wait around for an unreliable dealer, forge prescriptions, doctor shop, or engage in some other hustle to score your dope. While the FBI goes after deep underground drug selling sites like Silk Road, illegal online pharmacies have sprung up on every virtual corner. All you have to do is visit a website, make your choices, give your credit card info, and you’re set with a month’s (or more) supply of Ambien, Xanax, Ritalin, or morphine.
Jennifer was addicted to Ambien. She was the kind of drug addict who would take a handful of pills, lose consciousness, and wake up on the sidewalk in the middle of the night half-dressed. Or she would walk into a favorite restaurant, sober, and find that she’d been 86’d because of some Ambien-induced behavior that she didn’t remember.
“I was getting them prescribed by three doctors with refills, but my tolerance was so high and my body needed them so I wouldn’t go into withdrawal.” Jennifer was constantly requesting early refills and she knew that her behavior was sending up red flags at the pharmacies, so last year she decided to try her luck online.
Jennifer did a search and clicked on the first online pharmacy that popped up. She placed her order and the pharmacy called her back to get her debit card info. There was no request for a prescription, no doctor’s consultation. It was as easy to order Ambien, a federally controlled schedule 4 drug, as it was to order aspirin. Jennifer’s problems getting early refills were over. “This pharmacy doesn’t care about when you order. If I ordered 200 pills on a Tuesday, I could order another 200 on that Friday. They didn’t care, they were all about the money.”
After Ryan’s death, Francine Haight found that there were hundreds of online pharmacies (as of 2013, more than 34,000) selling prescription drugs. These pharmacies were able to dispense federally controlled drugs because there was never any explicit law against it. Laws governing the distribution of controlled substances were written in the 1970s, when no one could have predicted that one day sales could be made over a computer network. Consequently the law included no explicit prohibition against online pharmacies prescribing and distributing controlled substances. If prosecutors wanted to convict, they had to rely on an implicit prohibition, and do some tricky maneuvering in order to prove that online pharmacists’ methods “fall outside the usual course of professional practice.” This argument was used successfully in Ryan Haight’s case, and the online pharmacist and associated doctor were sentenced to prison.
The Ryan Haight Act and the DEA
As a result of Ryan’s case, Congress passed the Ryan Haight Online Pharmacy Consumer Protection Act of 2008. The act went into effect in April of 2009 and states that “No controlled substance that is a prescription drug as determined under the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act may be delivered, distributed, or dispensed by means of the Internet without a valid prescription.” “Valid” means that the person writing the prescription has had at least one in-person visit with the recipient of the prescription. Also, each online pharmacy is required to list, on its homepage, the name of the affiliated pharmacist, his or her licensing info, the full name and address and phone number of the pharmacy, and a certification that the pharmacy is licensed to deliver controlled substances through the Internet.
Shortly after the Ryan Haight Act was made law, the DEA announced that the online pharmacy problem was close to being solved. According to a senior DEA official, “The Ryan Haight Act has pretty much eliminated the online business in the United States [and] the DEA hasn’t found a large number of foreign sites selling controlled substances to the U.S." In 2010, the DEA’s pharmaceutical investigations chief said that “(t)he Internet is not as big of a problem as we all think it is…especially dealing with controlled substances.” He added that he thought that the illegal pharmacies that were still in business were probably selling fake and counterfeit drugs. He went on to claim that the lack of any prosecutions (there have since been a couple of successful prosecutions, but they are drops in an ocean of illegal online pharmacies) under the Ryan Haight Act was due to the law having a successful deterrent effect.
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