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Planet Drugs Direct, an online pharmacy based in Winnipeg, Canada, has announced a data breach. Hackers broke into their servers, exposing customers’ names, medical details, and contact and banking information. Legitscript is unequivocal in calling Planet Drugs Direct a “Rogue Internet Pharmacy,” their worst rating for online pharmacies, accusing them of violating state and federal laws.
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In their latest report on fake online pharmacies that ply their trade in the United States, the National Association of Boards of Pharmacy (NABP) found more than 1,500 new websites that it considers “Not Recommended,” and of these, 31% are offering illicit prescription drugs, such as codeine, fentanyl, oxycodone, Adderall, Valium, and Xanax. 99% of the websites offering these drugs…
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ASOP Global and LegitScript released a report analyzing the prevalence of illicit online sales of prescription drugs in China, a country where such sales are prohibited. Their analysis showed that about half of all Chinese online pharmaceuticals sellers are illicit, potentially exposing patients to counterfeit medicines, substandard medicines, financial fraud, and identity theft…
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In March, the FDA issued two warning letters to websites selling misbranded prescription drugs. The first website, azmedicinalshop.com, quickly went offline, but the second, thedonrx.net, continued to operate for months before finally going dark…
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The Partnership for Safe Medicines and the Alliance for Safe Online Pharmacies (ASOP Global), two public health advocacy groups focused on patient safety and the secure pharmaceutical supply chain, released an infographic today to call attention to the human toll that counterfeit medicines take on children in low and middle income countries.
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In this piece published in the Washington Free Beacon on April 25, 2019, staff writer Charles Fain Lehman explores issues around Florida’s drug importation proposal. “Critics,” he notes, “fear that the actual realities of regulatory oversight—especially in the hand of an as-yet-unnamed private vendor—will simply be too challenging to manage responsibly.”
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Politifact.com emailed us this week with questions about a recent ad about the dangers of attempting to import medicine from Canada. They labeled it negatively, but we noticed that they ignored certain facts while coming to their conclusion. In the interest of fairness, we’ve published below both the email from Politifact and our heavily sourced response. Judge for yourself if legislators in Florida are being naive about the risks of importation in a world with a highly evolved criminal counterfeit scheme.
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It isn’t just policymakers who believe drug importation will open the U.S. drug supply to counterfeits. In this editorial, published in the Times of Northwest Indiana on March 6, 2019, HIV-positive advocate Brandon Macsata explains that his own physician objected to ordering medicine from Canadian online pharmacies:
“It never crossed my mind that I might have been taking counterfeit medicine, or that the medicines meant to control my HIV could be compromising my immune system. So when my doctor found out, she told me to stop immediately. She warned me that online pharmacies often sell counterfeit drugs.”
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On Thursday, January 31, 2019, victims of counterfeit medicines and their families, local law enforcement, former DEA agents, and other experts in the fight against counterfeit medicines met for a discussion about the widespread impact fake drugs are having on communities and on the enormous burden the problem places on regulators who are responsible for our drug safety.
Learn more and watch the briefing here.
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MedicineSafe.org, a website launched by the Center for Safe Internet Pharmacies (CSIP) and the Partnership for Drug-Free Kids, is a new resource that Americans can use to educate themselves on prescription drug safety and the opioid crisis. On the website, you will find the Verify Before You Buy tool and learn how to safely store and dispose medicines along with many other important topics…
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