The Indianapolis Star has a valuable article providing tips to parents who are worried about their teenage children abusing prescription drugs. The article’s four tips:
1. Monitor the prescriptions you have in your home.
2. Secure your medicines.
3. Dispose of old prescriptions.
4. Communicate and set a good example for your child.
It’s nice to see a reasonable — and actually useful — article on this issue, rather than the hysterical attacks on online pharmacies that this topic often inspires.
Read the full article here.
Also, check out Not in My House, a Web site from the Partnership for a Drug-Free America.
The Florida Times-Union, the newspaper of Jacksonville, FL, published an editorial today headlined, “Internet Pharmacies: A prescription for death.”
We’re not crazy about that headline, as you might imagine. We’ve worked very hard to get the news media to distinguish legitimate, licensed Internet pharmacies from dangerous, rogue pharmacies in their coverage. But you know how it is.
In any case, we were pleased that the Times-Union’s editorial used one of our blog posts to illustrate the seriousness of the problem of prescription drug abuse. The relevant excerpt:
Most people know that Elvis Presley and Marilyn Monroe both died from an overdose of prescription drugs.
Judy Garland also succumbed to a prescription drug overdose – as did Howard Hughes and Anna Nicole Smith, reports eDrugSearch.com, a medication advocacy site.
Then, there was Paige Summers. The Web site says she was 1998 Penthouse Pet of the Year.
Five years later, she was killed by an overdose of codeine and oxycodone.
For those who haven’t read it, here’s the full blog post on celebrity prescription drug overdoses.
With all the talk of the dangers of online pharmacies in the media these days, it’s important to remind ourselves that when people are determined to do the wrong thing, they’ll do it with or without the Internet’s help.
I came across a great example of this in the news the other day, where in Prichard, Alabama, police arrested a man and woman for running a drug ring selling prescription drugs illegally.
How did the woman — Angela Hurst, 28 — build her supply? By ordering them from a rogue pharmacy online?
Nope. Here’s the story (italics mine):
Narcotics officers say Hurst called in at least 200 hundred fake prescriptions to area drug stores. Hurst was allowed her to get her hands on more than four thousand pills. Police say the suspects even bragged about how easy it is to outsmart local pharmacies.
If you’re a criminal or a junkie, you’ll find a way to do illegal things. That’s the sad truth.
Obviously, a lot has been said and written linking Internet pharmacies to prescription drug abuse. But prescription drug abuse occurs every day without the Internet being involved at all. In most cases, in fact, abusers are prescribed their meds by a doctor and pick them up at the corner pharmacy.
How does this happen? Shouldn’t physicians know when they’ve overprescribed a potentially dangerous drug to a patient?
Yes, an individual doctor should know. But most prescription drug abusers don’t just go to one doctor. They go to several. It’s called “doctor shopping.”
Actor Heath Ledger didn’t die from ordering drugs over the Internet. He died because he ordered too many drugs from too many different doctors. No one doctor would have approved Ledger’s drug regimen.
The Wall Street Journal’s health blog posted a great piece last Thursday on a man who is on a crusade to end the scourge of doctor shopping in California by upgrading a database that will allow physicians to check patients’ prescription drug history. The current system is virtually useless, slowed down by outdated technology (hint: fax machines are involved.)
What we really need is a database like this on a national basis. We should require both online and offline pharmacies to use it, at the risk of losing their license if they don’t. And, once we get past the politics over Canadian drug reimportation and bring licensed Canadian pharmacies officially into the fold, we can require them to use the database, too.
Of course, the problem is that privacy advocates will say it’s a violation of our rights, and right-wing pundits will say it’s a step toward socialized medicine. But if we’re committed to keeping prescription drug abusers off the streets, it’s something we must do.
Yeah, I know; I’ve written about this topic before — more than a few times. But I feel compelled to do so again. Frankly, I’m mad as heck and I can’t take it any more.
Just as there have been past hysterias blaming the Internet for sexual predators, pornography, political polarization, celebrity obsession, obesity (go outside and play!) and every other social malady facing our nation, now it seems the media is whipping itself into a frenzy over the dangers of Internet pharmacies.
The latest blog post I flagged on this topic, “Internet Pharmacy Websites the New Drug Dealers,” referenced a sad tale on CNN.com headlined, “My husband died from online drugs.”
Don’t get me wrong. I know that buying drugs online can be dangerous; that’s precisely why I started eDrugSearch.com — to provide a safe haven, where online pharmacies have been pre-screened for safety.
But let’s be clear here: in the case described on CNN, and in most cases of online drug abuse, the person buying the drugs is doing so without a prescription. They know this is wrong, and for this reason, the are specifically seeking out rogue pharmacies.
The problem of teenagers illegally purchasing drugs online has gotten a lot of attention — and rightly so. It’s a very real problem. But you can’t blame the Internet for this, any more than you can blame the highway for traffic accidents. And you can’t blame legitimate pharmacies, either.
In the same way that a prescription drug abuser can find a criminal (be it a friend or a stranger on a street corner) to sell them Vicodin, they can also find a criminal online to do the same. It’s no different.
So let’s focus our media attention — and law enforcement efforts — on stopping the criminal behavior, rather than tarring all Internet pharmacies with the same broad brush.
Now, why don’t we look a little more closely at the sources of the current controversy with Internet pharmacies. We have two main problems:
Problem 1. There are a lot of rogue pharmacies out there — as you can readily see every day when you check your e-mail and your spam folder is full of solicitations to buy Viagra and Xanax. Chasing these illegal operations down has been difficult for the FDA. It’s like policing anything over the Internet — very difficult.
Problem 2. Politics is getting in the way of addressing Problem 1.
How’s that? Let me explain –
Consumer reimportation of medications from Canada is heavily favored by the U.S. public. Obviously, a licensed Canadian pharmacy is just as safe as a licensed U.S. pharmacy. But unfortunately, because of the influence of Big Pharma, the Bush Administration and the FDA have done all they can to block reimportation.
Fortunately, they gave up on the idea of confiscating consumer purchases. But what they have done instead is confuse consumers — by giving the public the impression that ordering your Lipitor from a licensed Canadian pharmacy is somehow not as safe as buying it from a licensed U.S. pharmacy.
In their rhetoric, the FDA associates these legal, long-established, perfectly safe pharmacies with the rogue operations. If you ask me, it’s an intentional deception to appease Big Pharma. But whatever the motive, it’s factually inaccurate.
It also leads the National Association of Boards of Pharmacy (NABP) to list legitimate pharmacies alongside bad ones in its list of 79 online pharmacies to avoid, which it announced in a press release this week. The legit pharmacies are on the list simply because they are headquartered in Canada.
How sad that is, and what a mess for consumers.
eDrugSearch.com has stepped into the fray to try to clear up the confusion and offer a safe place for consumers. We suggest you use our list rather than the NABP’s, because — well — it’s actually rational. You know the pharmacies have been checked out. And that frees you to focus on saving money, which is why you’re shopping online in the first place.
I want to be very clear here: Buying prescription drugs online is a good thing! It’s more convenient. It’s more private. It’s less expensive because it gives you the necessary tools to comparison shop, both domestically and internationally.
As long as you’re shopping from pharmacies that you know are safe, and you’re not a criminal yourself, you’ll be fine online. More than fine.
Happy shopping.
The big news this week is that super-celebs like Paris, Lindsay and Britney are all rumored to be using Adderall, the ADHD drug, for weight loss. Since these celebrities are among the stars most admired by teenage girls, I can only assume that this revelation will influence more young people to abuse this drug.
The improper use of Adderall can cause heart problems, liver problems. Some people are allergic to it. And it can have dangerous interactions with other drugs. The Heath Ledger tragedy should tell us all we need to know about the risks of taking multiple drugs without fully understanding how they interact.
Adderall is for ADHD. If you’re looking to lose weight, try diet and exercise — please.
Here’s a nice video from Employment Crossing with tips on buying prescription drugs online. The one caveat we would add is that the FDA should not be your be-all-and-end-all in determining how, where and what to purchase online. It’s one data point to consider, but as we’ve shown time and again, it is a flawed one.
Doctors in California and Texas are currently under investigation for illegally prescribing Ledger the painkillers Oxycontin and Vicodin, according to reports.
Whether the individual doctors did anything wrong, however, patients can get in trouble when they go to multiple doctors — which is increasingly the case in today’s world.
That’s why it is important to take the safety of your drug regimen in your own hands through a sophisticated tool like PharmaSurveyor (now in beta) or some of the other drug-interaction tools currently on line, like this one at DoubleCheckMD .
