The CASA white paper, "You’ve Got Drugs!" Prescription Drug Pushers on the Internet, originally was slated to be part of an exhaustive, three-year CASA study on the diversion and abuse of controlled prescription drugs – those which are dangerous and addictive. But upon uncovering the scope of the problem, CASA considered the threat to children too immediate to wait until the full study was completed at the end of this year.
CASA and BDA released this part of the report now to alert parents, teachers and others of the grave risk that Internet drug pushers present to American children.
During a one-week analysis, BDA identified 495 Web sites advertising controlled prescription drug sales: 338 portal sites that led to another site for purchase of such drugs and 157 anchor sites that directly sold dangerous and addictive drugs. Drugs available over the Internet included opioids or painkillers such as OxyContin, Percocet, Darvon and Vicodin; stimulants such as Dexedrine, Ritalin and Adderall; and depressants such as Valium and Xanax.
Only six percent of the Web sites selling drugs said they required a prescription to complete a sales transaction and not a single site placed any restriction on the sale of these dangerous and addictive drugs to children.
Among the study's findings about the drug-selling Web sites:
- Ninety-four percent did not require any prescription (41 percent stated no prescription was needed; 49 percent offered an "online consultation"; four percent made no mention of a prescription).
- Four percent requested a prescription be faxed.
- Two percent requested a prescription be mailed.
"These Internet pharmaceutical predators pose a dangerous and immediate threat to our children," said Joseph A. Califano, Jr., CASA's chairman and president and former U.S. Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare. "These drugs are as readily available to our children on the Internet as candy. Anyone – including children – can easily obtain addictive prescription drugs online without a prescription. All they need is a credit card, and if parents' credit card information is saved on a home PC, today's tech savvy kids will know where to find it."
"The wide availability of controlled prescription drugs on the Internet is an open floodgate of drugs of abuse and the tide is rising ever higher," said Beau Dietl, chairman of Beau Dietl & Associates. "Access to controlled substances over the Internet is a fairly new phenomenon and laws and regulations have yet to catch up with it. The global nature of the Internet and the ease of creating sites, then making them vanish without a trace, make it extremely difficult to regulate. But Congress must act swiftly to strengthen laws to protect our children from these Internet drug pushers."
"While state and federal governments struggle to close this wide open channel of distribution, a huge burden rests with parents, " added Mr. Califano. "Our research demonstrates that parents who are actively engaged in their children's lives, including monitoring Internet activities, have children far less likely to smoke, drink and use drugs. We urge parents to be vigilant over their children's use of the Internet and we urge Internet companies to do everything they can to block access to these Web sites."
