Hey guys, first post here. Just had few question about online pharmacies. Is it really legal to buy through them? And do they actually save you money? I’ve heard stories of people getting sugar pills, or totally ripped off. But I also have heard some people have used them successfully.
What are you buying from the foreign pharmacy? If you are buying anything illegal, or a prescription drug that you don’t have a prescription for, it is not legal.
If the products you are buying are legal for general use, but counterfeit an existing trademark, CBP may take them away.
Moderator Note
Welcome to the SDMB, Snownator.
Please note that we do not allow discussions of things that encourage illegal activities here. Don’t worry, your post is fine. You are free to discuss the legalities of online pharmacies here. That’s not a problem.
This is just a friendly reminder to all to keep all responses on the legal side of the line. Let’s not have any “how to” information about how to avoid getting caught while violating the law. Let’s also not post any links to online pharmacies, please.
And again, welcome, Snownator. We hope you enjoy your time here.
This article from WebMD discusses the legal issues involved:
The rest of the article has a lot more detail.
I purchase my anti-hypertensive medications, for which I have prescriptions from my doctor, online. I get the exact same drugs I would get from a pharmacy for a fraction of the price (For example, my Atenolol 10 mg tablets, I buy a years worth for what my one month copay used to be).
When I asked my doctor if it was legal, he said, “do I look like a fucking lawyer?”
Good article on legality linked above, but re: the other half of the question about saving money…
I suppose it depends on whether you get ripped off or not and waste your money! That would probably not make it as economical.
I seem to remember there are independent review sites out there that verify this kind of thing? Did a quick search and found this one which seems to do pretty in depth analysis of them.
Side note: I remember going to a pharmacy in India while I lived there and paying like 50c for antibiotics. Blew my mind. Meds are just too damn expensive in the US.
Medications such as Viagra and Cialis, which can cost more than $60/pill thru conventional means, can be found for less than $1/pill online. These are generic versions, granted, but they are the same active ingredient as brand names and they come from legitimate manufacturers.
Savings like these are what motivate people to use online pharmacies. In some cases, it may be the difference between getting the medication you need and going without.
As best as I can tell, all the major drug distributors in the US have an on-line arm. CVS has Caremark. Wal-Mart sells drugs on-line. For more than a two decades, my employer-sponsored drug benefit has favored the on-line versions over local drug stores. These on-line pharmacies work like regular pharmacies in that you need a prescription for prescription drugs. They still use fax machines as their default method of getting that scrip, too. They are completely legal, and are usually pretty good about making sure you have appropriate paperwork.
You can also buy drugs from over-seas pharmacies. The legality of that is complicated. If you don’t need a prescription (ibuprofen, Omeprazole) it’s usually legal. If you have a prescription, and the drug hasn’t been approved for sale in the US (but isn’t a scheduled, illegal drug) it’s generally legal. If the drug HAS been approved in the US, it’s generally not legal.
I’ve heard of a couple of drugs that were recently approved in the US, to the distress of patients using them. They had been cheap generic drugs, widely available in every other country, and cheap to import. But when they were approved in the US, the company that got them approved got a US patent (or some legal monopoly, anyway) and jacked up the price. The two I heard of got more expensive by factors of 50 and 90. That’s not a 50% increase, that’s a drug that now costs 50 times as much per pill as it did before. (Or 90 times).
Doesn’t it depend on whether the drug is still under patent? I would expect if it’s no longer under patent, and there’s generics sold in the US, it’s legal to order them online from foreign phamacies.
Now you might imagine that you wouldn’t get much of a deal over domestic generics in that situation, but not necessarily. There’s a certain drug which came off patent a couple years ago and now there’s at least three generics sold in the US. The original was priced at something like $90K/year for 400mg pills and about half that for 100mg pills. The generics are not much cheaper, priced at something like 90% of the non-generic (as best I can tell; it’s hard to find out this info over the net). Foreign pharmacies (mostly in Canada) have the drug at much less (maybe 30% or so) and really cheap ones (in India) have it for a pitance (10% or less). Of course you run a bigger risk when you order from the latter.
[Note: I do not take this drug, which is an anti-cancer drug. I was just curious about its generic price and did some research about it recently.]
Laws vary. What country are you in?
If you’re in the United States, and you have a prescription for the drug, it might be legal.
In practice, whether it is legal or not, if it’s not a controlled substance you’re virtually certain to get away with it. A lot of people are doing this (millions), and generally what you hear about is that either they get their drugs without incident or customs seizes them and sends you a letter. This is generally what happens for the controlled substance variety as well.
Either way, it’s considered generally a bad idea to challenge the seizure because that’s admitting to (what might be) a crime.
Anyways, it’s a risk, but I would say that if the medicine is something you need to remain healthy, and you have a valid prescription, and you can’t afford (or it would leave you little money leftover) the prices from a U.S. pharmacy, the risk is much smaller than the risk of being without your meds. As the moderators say, we can’t talk about *how *exactly to break the law (though there are forums that openly discuss this, as well as which online pharmacies are legit), or advise that you do so. I’m just saying, if you are desperate enough, it’s probably a lower risk.
Oh, I hope this isn’t breaking the rules : if you wanted to know more about this subject, try Reddit. For whatever reason, Reddit doesn’t seem to care about any rules. There are subreddits dedicated to shoplifting techniques and discussion as well as reddits dedicated to discussing importing of pharmaceuticals, including some subreddits dedicated to just discussing specific types of pharmaceutical imports. I’m sure whatever it is you want to know about is discussed openly in great detail on there. (Reddit is a far more anonymous feeling community, which is why like posting here, but it has some content not covered here)
The FDA’s position is that it is illegal but that in certain specified circumstances (scroll down halfway) they will not take adverse action.
My wife is originally from Egypt and used to buy birth control pills there when she went back to visit because they were dirt cheap. But this is because they were heavily subsidized by the government, not because the market was different. The same might apply to India. AFAIK meds are indeed more expensive in the U.S. but various meds for various reasons, not all just because we are getting screwed.
My understanding is that most antibiotcs are not prescription drugs in India. That will make them much cheaper. The anti-cancer drug I mentioned upthread missed out on having a patent in India due to a technicality, which is one reason why it’s cheaper there. Pharmaceutical companies there have been making it for some time.
I’m not sure. The two drugs for which I’ve heard experts (or at least, people who purported to be such) opine are out-of-patent in the rest of the world, but newly available in the US, where a single provider had a legal monopoly. I imagine it depends on whether the issue is the patent or some other drug law.
I know that in general, if you buy a drug legally for your own use outside the country, and it’s legal for you to have it here, you are allowed to bring it home with you. I don’t know if there are no limits on the quantity, or if customs simply doesn’t care, but I certainly know people who have imported a multi-year supply of a legal-but-expensive drug this way, and I’ve never heard of anyone running into trouble doing so.
Ignorance fought. I knew that if you did not have a prescription for Viagra or Xanax that it was illegal to buy them online. However, I did not know that even if I have a valid prescription for these drugs it is still illegal to buy them from overseas even in the quantity and dosage I am prescribed.
In this “nanny state” that I live in called the Republic of Ireland, purchasing prescription and non-prescription medication even from inside the EU is illegal.
Even buying herbal supplements is illegal… :rolleyes:
Hopefully you Americans and Canadians don’t have such ridiculous rules…I don’t even believe that the UK has such draconian rules as well.
Most (local) independent pharmacies will supply generic sildenafil citrate for about $1/dose. The generic is approved for treatment of hypertension. The catches are that it’s technically an off-brand use since the generic form is not FDA-approved for ED, so your insurer is not required to cover it even if it would otherwise cover Viagra, and that it’s only available in 20 milligram tablets. Viagra comes in 10 mg, 20 mg and 50 mg doses.
Fraud should be illegal.