What is legal and what is not - buying medicines on the web

[Guest guest]

I found that information that I referred to in a recent post.

Apologies to Digest folk as I do not have a link as such and had to

copy and paste the whole piece.

You will see that it is illegal to send medicines through the post

and this could result in prosection it says.

Internet sites advertising medicines for sale seem to be breaking the

law also though I am unsure if they mean prescription meds only.

Mo

Home > PJ (current issue) > News Feature | Search

The Pharmaceutical Journal

Vol 271 No 7262 p202

16 August 2003

This article

Reprint

Photocopy

PDF* 50K

News feature

Buying medicines on the world wide web: what is legal and what is not?

What controls are there over medicine sales over the internet?

(on the staff of The Journal) investigates

Recent reports in national newspapers of the suicide of a young man

who began abusing drugs at university and then bought large

quantities of painkillers, tranquillisers and antipsychotics over the

internet have drawn attention to the problem of regulating

international sales of medicines.

Before the advent of the internet and its widespread use the problem

was a minor one because bypassing national legal controls on buying

medicines was hard in practice because orders needed to be placed in

writing or over the telephone to previously known suppliers.

The internet has changed that. Anyone with a computer and web access

can easily find willing sellers somewhere in the world. Whether those

sellers are offering products that can be relied on is, of course,

another matter.

The problem is that the world wide web, and the trading opportunity

it offers, has developed faster than legislation. This is no surprise

because laws usually change in response to difficulties, rather than

in anticipation of them. So the situation now is that there is no

effective legislation in place to deal with a problem that barely

existed just a few years ago.

In the United Kingdom, people cannot commit an offence by buying

medicines form any source. All the legal controls are exerted on

sellers.

To obtain prescription medicines from a source in the United Kingdom

lawfully, prospective purchasers must either buy them from a

practitioner — defined by Section 58 of the Medicines Act 1968 and

its amendments — or present a prescription from a practitioner at a

lawfully conducted retail pharmacy business. It is the supplier's

responsibility to comply with the law. Purchasers do not commit any

offence if they are able to obtain medicines when there is no

prescription, unless the medicine is a Controlled Drug that can only

lawfully be possessed after a prescription has been issued.

Steve Lutener, head of professional conduct at the Royal

Pharmaceutical Society, said: " The man in the street can do an awful

lot; the Act doesn't constrain him. The onus is placed on the seller. "

But the requirements of UK law generally do not extend beyond its

borders. Although the Medicines Act prohibits imports of medicines,

other than in accordance with a product licence, it specifically

exempts imports for personal use and imports by householders for

administration to members of their household.

It is this exemption that makes it possible for people to buy

medicines overseas while on holiday or on business trips and bring

them home. It also enables people to buy from any foreign suppliers

they know about. And it is the internet that has produced an

explosion in awareness of foreign suppliers and has provided an easy

means of placing orders and paying for them.

The exemption is there to facilitate continuing treatment during

international travel. Its intended purpose is not to provide a way of

bypassing systems that are in place to protect people from unintended

self-harm.

Mr Lutener said: " The purpose of the Medicines Act is to protect the

public. Section 58 is there because there are medicines which can

only be used safely after consulting a doctor. If there are ways of

getting medicines which reduce the involvement of a doctor then that

is a weakness in the legislative process. But it is for medical

practitioners and their regulatory bodies to decide what is

professionally acceptable. "

A further safety net that has been created to prevent the

inappropriate purchase of prescription medicines over the internet,

or even from pharmacies, is the prohibition on advertising them to

the public.

A spokesman for the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory

Agency said: " These legal controls apply equally to medicines sold or

supplied via internet transactions. "

So it seems that offering to dispense prescriptions is lawful, but

listing medicines that can be supplied on prescription, whether on

the internet or in a printed pharmacy advertisement may not be.

The MHRA is concerned about what it calls the global problem of the

availability of medicinal products on the internet and says that any

website reported to it which appears to be in breach of regulations

on the advertising, sale and supply of medicines will be

investigated. Persons in breach of the legislation face an unlimited

fine and up to two years in prison.

To date, the MHRA has successfully caused seven United Kingdom sites

to be closed down by internet service providers and seven operators

to amend their websites. It has achieved three successful

prosecutions and made 12 referrals to other governmental agencies or

overseas enforcement bodies. Joint initiatives with trading standards

offices and the Office of Fair Trading have focused on UK sites found

to be in breach of both medicines and consumer protection legislation

and enforcement action is being planned.

The MHRA also works with European and other overseas regulatory

agencies to ensure that websites comply with relevant laws.

There are additional restrictions where Controlled Drugs are

concerned, even assuming that a prescription giving authority to

possess exists. No-one can import CDs into the UK, or export them,

whether for personal use or not, unless a valid import licence is in

place.

Overseas suppliers must, of course, comply with the law in their own

countries, but there can be no guarantee that they will.

But there is one final obstacle to buying medicines over the

internet. Anything ordered from overseas to be delivered by post will

make the last stage of its journey by Royal Mail and there are rules

about what can and cannot be sent by post.

Using the authority of the Postal Services Act 2000, the Royal Mail

prohibits the posting of medicines unless they are sent by a health

professional in an emergency. Packages can be inspected if there is

suspicion that the rules have been broken and the contents returned

to the sender or destroyed. UK senders who break the rules can be

prosecuted.

So there it is. The simple fact is that members of the public can

legally buy most medicines over the internet, both domestically and

internationally. It is unlikely that the law was ever intended to

allow this, and whether it is safe or sensible for them to be able to

do so is a question that demands an answer.

How easy is it to buy medicines on the web?

Buying prescription medicines on the internet without seeing a doctor

is a simple matter of finding a website that offers what you want and

completing some online forms. Websites can be found easily by typing

words like " online " and " pharmacy " into a search engine. Such

searches will identify domestic sites which offer to supply medicines

after completion of an online questionnaire, overseas sites which

make the same offer and overseas sites which sell medicines without a

prescription regardless of their UK legal classification. Spam e-

mails are also a ready source of websites.

The Journal has obtained Viagra from a UK pharmacy after completing

an online questionnaire which the site said was to be used by a

doctor as the basis for issuing a private prescription. We also

bought Augmentin from a website based in India, warfarin from a

website based in Australia (the product was actually supplied from

Fiji) and digoxin and isosorbide dinitrate from Thailand.

* PDF files on PJ Online require Acrobat Reader 4 or later

Back to Top

Home | Journals | News | Notice-board | Search | Jobs Classifieds |

Site Map | Contact us

©The Pharmaceutical Journal