A leading pharmacist has warned that online pharmacies are putting patients’ lives at risk by making it too easy to buy prescription-only medicines without proper checks. A BBC investigation discovered that 20 online pharmacies were selling restricted drugs without conducting necessary checks, such as GP approval. The journalists purchased over 1,600 various prescription-only pills by entering false information without challenge. Regulator the General Pharmaceutical Council has called for extra checks. The BBC’s findings have been described as highlighting the “wild west of buying medicines on the web” by Thorrun Govind, a pharmacist, health lawyer and former chair of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society.
Katie Corrigan’s parents, among others, are calling for stricter rules for online pharmacies. Katie, from St Erth in Cornwall, died in 2020 after developing an addiction to painkillers. Her GP had stopped supplying the drug after realising she had been prescribed too much and prematurely allowed to request new prescriptions. However, Katie was able to buy a painkiller and a drug used to treat anxiety from multiple online pharmacies without notifying her GP.
The coroner at Katie’s inquest confirmed that her GP had not been contacted by any of the pharmacies to check if the drugs were safe for her. In his final report, he said the safety controls were inadequate. Katie’s mother, Christine Taylor, wants online pharmacies to obtain more background information on their buyers. “It’s far too easy – it’s people’s lives, and it’s a disaster waiting to happen,” she says.
Current guidance from the General Pharmaceutical Council states that online pharmacies must get “all the information they need” to ensure medicine is safe and appropriate for individual patients, while “high-risk, habit-forming medicines” should not be sold without additional safeguards. However, some medicines that Katie Corrigan was able to purchase still appear to be readily available online. Among the 20 businesses identified by the BBC as selling one or more restricted drugs, nine sold the anti-anxiety drug without further checks. In total, the BBC were able to buy a potentially fatal dose of the drug from these pharmacies.
Licensed online pharmacies are regulated by the GPhC and expected to carry out risk assessments to determine which medicines can be safely sold online. However, the Royal Pharmaceutical Society and Ms. Govind have expressed concerns that the regulator’s guidance is too vague and calls for better checks. The GPhC issued renewed guidance in 2022 after investigating whether pharmacies should continue to operate in relation to online pharmacies
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