Prescription drug use is on the rise here in the United States. According to the 2006 National Survey on Drug Use and Health, 16.2 million Americans age 12 and older had taken a prescription pain reliever, tranquilizer, stimulant or sedative for nonmedical purposes at least once in the year prior to being surveyed.
Teenagers and adults don’t have to use a drug dealer when they can get drugs in their medicine cabinets. And if the cabinet is empty, they can just as easily get prescription drugs from the Internet. And they don’t even need a prescription. CNN.com has an article about these online pharmacies and how they create and feed addicts.
According to the report, it is illegal in every state for doctors to prescribe medicines to patients whom they do not know across state lines. It is also illegal in most states for pharmacies to ship prescriptions to where they have no license to operate. A CNN reporter had no problem ordering and quickly receiving via mail both Prozac and Elavil. Both prescription bottles had a doctors name that the reporter hadn’t seen, talked to, or heard of.
Read the full article: Widow: My husband died from online drugs
CNN’s Anderson Cooper investigates further why doctors write online prescriptions for patients they never see tonight at 10:00pm.
Technorati Tags: internet pharmacy, prescription drugs, CNN, addiction
