Rogue pharmacies turning to Twitter to peddle drugs

A Canadian website classified as a rogue online pharmacy by LegitScript is using Twitter to advertise medicines, indicating the battle against the illegal medicines trade must also be fought on social media platforms.

In a news alert citing a blog on The Guardian newspaper's website, the Partnership for Safe Medicines reports that Canadian-Drugshop.com has set up a Twitter account called '@canadianshop' to offer prescription-only medicines for sale, linking directly to pricing and ordering pages.

At the time of writing, the '@canadianshop' tweets contained links forwarding to a site called Canadian-cheap-rx.com, with a range of prescription-only medicines on offer, and even a deal of two free Viagra tablets with every purchase.  At no point in SecuringPharma.com's test transaction was there a request for a prescription.

PSM notes that LegitScript reviewed the Canadian-Drugshop.com pharmacy in February 2009 and classified it as a rogue online pharmacy operating in violation of federal and/or state laws.

The organisation has asked the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to work with Twitter and other social networking platforms to verify pharmaceutical accounts.

"New policies and legislation must prohibit financial transactions for drug sales of unlicensed pharmacies and create substantive criminal penalties for any party-including websites and search engines-that engage in the illegal sale of contraband or counterfeit drugs," commented PSM's vice president Dr. Bryan Liang.

SecuringPharma.com contacted Twitter for a comment on the issue, but had not received a reply by the time this article went to press.