Offshore pharmacy sites

March 21, 2000 1:44 PM

Offshore pharmacy sites selling prescription drugs to US customers were shut down this week. I wonder if the cat is already out of the bag on this one, will there ever be a way to regulate prescription drug traffic on the web? There's no worldwide organization to watch over things like this, nor are there laws that every country can agree on. Something tells me that getting steroids and "date rape" pills online is going to be a problem that's never going away.
posted by mathowie (1 comment total)

Drugs like that have to come into the US somehow, and since they are "legitimate businesses" that means they'll send them by mail or through one of the standard package delivery services.
Since they have to cross the border, they have to make a declaration of contents on a form which is attached so that the package goes through customs.
Generally speaking, nearly every country has laws about lying on those forms; doing so in this case is drug smuggling and as such no different than trying to smuggle a ton of cocaine into the country.
It doesn't seem to me that there's really much of a problem here. It won't take long for them to figure out which return addresses or business logos to look for as off-shore pharmacies.
posted by Steven Den Beste at 2:06 PM on March 21, 2000