Internet increasingly serves as means to buy prescription drugs

Walgreens and CVS may begin to see fierce competition from a new marketplace that offers pharmaceutical drugs without a doctor’s prescription.

The Internet is increasingly becoming a source for people to buy prescription drugs without the proper paperwork, according to a poll commissioned by the Digital Citizens Alliance and conducted by Zogby Analytics.

“More and more people are becoming more aware of the Internet as a marketplace to find these pharmaceuticals and utilize them,” said Adam Benson, deputy executive director for the Digital Citizens Alliance.

Twenty-eight percent of the poll’s respondents said they or a friend have ordered prescription drugs through the Internet without a prescription from a doctor, which is a 13 percent increase from 2013.

This substantial jump demonstrates the issue is more prevalent than in the past, and people are progressively becoming aware that prescription medications are easily accessible, Benson said.

That’s not the only problem the poll discovered.

Thirty-two percent of the respondents said they or a friend had taken prescription medication to get through finals, and a third of this group did so without a proper prescription.

“When you talk about a third of that age group saying they take the prescription medications to get through finals, that’s a very high number,” Benson said.

Students using pharmaceutical drugs to stay focused and study for finals can be hazardous, said Courtney Stewart, coordinator of research translation at the Indiana Prevention Center Resource Center.

The drugs used to keep a student focused on studying are often psychostimulants, such as Adderall and Vyvanse, Stewart said.

“These drugs can place the brain in a state of hyperfocus,” she said. “This can then affect the sleep cycle and leave one sleep-deprived. The human brain needs rest.”

The Digital Citizens Alliance is a nonprofit organization based in Washington, D.C., that began in December 2012.

“Our mission is to shed light on what’s going on with online crime and the way consumers are targeted and exploited by criminals,” Benson said.

The group does not deal with the stereotypical Nigerian prince scam, but it is more concerned with pharmaceutical drug access and piracy, which Digital Citizens prefers to call “content theft.”

“We’re constantly trying to bring to the surface some of the things that go on in the dark corners of this realm,” Benson said.

Digital Citizens is dedicated to exposing pharmaceutical drug access to the public and has published several investigative reports on the issue of drugs and the Internet.

One such report found that as the number of YouTube videos showcasing narcotics increased, so, too, did the number of advertisements for the purchase of drugs online.
 
A Google search for “buy drugs without a prescription” yielded more than 38,000 results, according to the report published June 2013.

The problem does not exist on just the Internet.

In a Digital Citizens video report titled No Prescription, No Problem, an adolescent male orders Percocet on the telephone without having the prescription. Despite telling the operator he did not have a prescription, he was still able to get the medication.

The Zogby poll also found that 72 percent of respondents share prescription medications with friends.

“The whole situation is really quite striking,” Benson said. “Prescription drugs are accessible through more avenues than ever.”