World wide worry
Although most people would say that they have benefited from the existence of the world wide web, there are many potentially dangerous drawbacks to it. Among them is the ease with which prescription-only medicines can be obtained through it — an issue recently highlighted by the death of a student who was able to buy hundreds of painkillers, tranquillisers and antipsychotics online for his own use.
United Kingdom medicines legislation was originally designed to protect
patients from unscrupulous practitioners and unsafe treatments. The legislation
predates the internet, which now makes it possible to exploit an exemption
that was put in place for the legitimate health reason of allowing continuing
treatment during occasional international travel (see News
Feature, p202).
As a result, quite legally, it is possible to obtain prescription-only
medicines in the UK by having a “virtual” consultation with
a doctor (by means of completing an online questionnaire), after which
the doctor issues a private prescription for a pharmacist to dispense.
Obtaining medicines from other parts of the world can be even easier — by
ordering and paying online using a credit card — with the additional
problem that what you receive may be of dubious quality.
For UK residents, at least, this gives legal access to powerful and potentially
dangerous medicines without any control, because the legislation focuses
on the activities of the supplier, and the purchaser (with the exception
of Controlled Drugs) is entitled to obtain whatever he or she can.
Tougher legislation needs to be put in place to protect vulnerable individuals.
The difficulty is framing legislation that does the job without being
impossible to police.
For example, New Zealand medical council rules require a doctor to have
met a patient in a face-to-face consultation at least once and for the
patient to be under that doctor’s care before a prescription is
issued. “Virtual” consultations as in the UK would be illegal.
Other countries, like the United States and Germany, have strict import/export
legislation, but this is designed to protect licensing agreements more
than individual purchasers.
Since it would be impossible to police the import and export of
all small packages, and the likelihood of worldwide agreement on the
prescription of medicines across borders is equally remote, access to
medicines through the internet is a problem that is set to increase.
Warning people of the potential dangers of making these purchases may,
sadly, be all that can be done.
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