The DEA and CDC have issued warnings to the public concerning unlicensed online pharmacies selling drugs laced with fentanyl and methamphetamines. Just days earlier, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York announced charges against 18 suspects “for their involvement in a scheme to advertise, sell, manufacture, and ship millions of deadly pills disguised as legitimate pharmaceuticals.”
The press release stated that tens of thousands of victims were taken in by the “fake online pharmacies” across dozens of websites allegedly set up but these suspects, leading to at least nine deaths from narcotics poisoning. The suspects purportedly mimicked the appearance of conventional drugs to the point that they were “indistinguishable” from actual prescription medication, pressing them in basement pill mills across Manhattan and the Bronx, as well as other locations.
From 2017-2023, the United States saw a 67% rise opioid deaths, with a total of 454,464 victims, according to the CDC. While the government agency’s data for this year shows a slight decrease, rates still remain much higher than just a decade ago. When it comes to overdose deaths more specifically (overall deaths include other factors like homicide and suicide), synthetic drugs like fentanyl and its analogues account for the vast majority of the sharp increase over the past decade (43,982 in 2013 to 105,002 in 2023), while prescription opioids and heroin overdoses have held steady or declined.
According to research conducted by the National Association of Boards of Pharmacy, nearly 95% of online pharmacies are operating illegally, and 96% of those did not require valid prescription for the sale of prescription-only medicine. Other studies have shown that among those who use these sites, their low prices were the main reason consumers cited for using them, declaring themselves willing to take the “calculated risk” of going through channels not approved by U.S. regulators. The rate of inflation for pharmaceuticals has been three times higher than the average for all other commodities over the past three decades. According to a recent pharmacy survey conducted by Healthcare.com, 4 in 10 respondents said that they were concerned that drug spending in their household could lead to bankruptcy or debt, and about 3 in 10 said they had trouble paying for food or housing the past year due to the high cost of drugs.
In their statements, the DEA and CDC are urging patients to check if their online pharmacy is U.S. state-licensed, which they can do through a portal on the FDA’s webiste, and to make sure the site requests a valid prescription for medications that require it. Both also caution patients not to buy from pharmacies that offer steep discounts on medications that “seem too good to be true.”
