Internet Drug Sales: New Challenges for Policymakers, Parents?

July 2004

It may be as easy to buy opiates and other abusable drugs online as it is to purchase a book or CD, according to a recent investigation by researchers at the Philadelphia-based Treatment Research Institute. Using search techniques familiar to even novice browsers, TRI researcher Robert Forman, Ph.D. uncovered numerous Internet sites where opiates, “date rape” and other abusable drugs are offered for purchase to interested buyers without a prescription.

All of the sites required only a shipping address and payment method to complete a drug sale. Complementary trial offers were featured by one site and many others boasted of secretive shipping practices to avoid confiscation by government officials.

Forman’s investigation began with a simple Google search. Fifty-three of the first 100 links were to sites offering to sell opiate medications without a prescription. The sites had names emphasizing their easy accessibility, customer orientation, location and illicit status. One site proclaimed “if you are a recreational user, so be it, it is your personal right to do what you want in the privacy of your home.” Another offered to send “all new customers three 50 mg. codeine tabs” free of charge. “Satisfied customers” were asked to send $5 in cash and “the company will send another 20 tabs of codeine”. If the customer pays for these 20 doses the company will then advance them 40 doses.

Thirty-five of the 53 links offered to also sell other abusable medications including barbiturates, stimulants, benzodiazepines, and “date rape” drugs such as Rohypnol and GHB. The investigators did not find any sites offering to sell heroin, cocaine, marijuana, or ecstasy but many sites offered to sell marijuana seeds, and a few advertised opium poppies, and coca leaves.

Half of the sites were registered to owners outside the United States. Many assured potential customers that purchases could be made with minimal risk of seizure by U.S. Customs. One site stated “No labels indicating either package contents or our company name are displayed. And to ensure maximum success in delivery rate, we change the return address for each shipment. Confiscation Guarantee - we guarantee to reship your order for free in the event of confiscation.”

The unregulated, online access to opiates is a new and relatively undocumented phenomenon. Forman and his team were unable to find any articles in the medical literature about the online sale of opiates without a prescription, however there have been several reports in U.S. Justice Department publications documenting the existence of this problem. Websites selling opiates and other drugs of abuse can be readily established, operated, and relocated. Sites owned or hosted outside the United States present jurisdictional complications for regulators and law enforcement. The use of online pseudonyms, chat rooms, instant messaging, bulletin boards, news groups, money wiring services, electronic encryption, and public Internet access (e.g. Internet-enabled cafes) enable buyers and sellers to do business over the Internet without making contact or creating a paper trail.

“Interviews with multiple addiction treatment providers indicate that patients are now using the Internet as a means of obtaining opiates and other abusable drugs,” Forman said. “Unfortunately, almost nothing is known about the drugs that are shipped, the operators of these sites, or their impact on public health. Notably, however, from 1994 to 2001, the number of emergency room mentions citing opiate analgesics increased 123%; this rate of increase is greater than all other categories of abusable drugs except marijuana - another substance that is heavily promoted online.”

__________________________________________

For additional information contact Bonnie Catone at BCatone@tresearch.org.