imagine losing a loved one to a
prescription medication presumed to be
safe unfortunately this is the sad truth
for one too many families including ed
ternan whose 22 year old son charlie
died after being poisoned by a
counterfeit prescription medication he
bought online
joining us now is ed as well as caroline
jernin executive director of the
virginia board of pharmacy as well as
the nabp president thank you both for
joining us
thank you
caroline what are the dangers of robe
online pharmacies and counterfeit
medications
so this is a really prolific problem
that we're having right now there are
numerous websites online advertising how
to obtain prescription drugs and we want
the consumers to appreciate that just
because someone purports to be a safe
online pharmacy
they probably are not there are
legitimate safe online pharmacies but
the majority of the internet sites that
are advertising prescription drugs are
operating illegally the national
association of board of pharmacy
looked at over 25 000 websites and found
that over 95 percent of those websites
are operating illegally they may not
require a valid prescription and most
often what they are dispensing are
counterfeit drugs that contain very
dangerous substances that can create
patient harm or even kill someone if it
was to contain a dangerous substance
like fentanyl
and caroline why are online pharmacies
and social media accounts so appealing
to consumers as a source for medication
with the high cost of prescription drugs
it's it's very natural that people would
turn to the internet looking for a
cheaper alternative we're very
accustomed to ordering other types of
items from the internet and most of
these websites do advertise drugs at
cheap costs so it's very appealing they
may also purport to be a canadian
pharmacy and it's unfortunate but
citizens might think that that therefore
is a safe pharmacy for them to order
their prescription drugs from and as our
country has conversation about legally
expanding allowances for importing drugs
from canada legally we really need to be
careful to make sure that we're not
creating an unintended consequence or
opportunity for criminal activity to
increase in the space
ed can you tell us charlie's story
well in may of 2020 charlie was a
senior in college
and he went on a social media site to
get a percocet for his chronically bad
back
unfortunately what he got was not a
percocet what he got was a realistic
looking counterfeit pill
made of fentanyl
which the doctors explained to us
probably killed him in less than 15
minutes
caroline how can we be sure an online
pharmacy is legitimate that medication
is safe
so the national association of boards of
pharmacy has created a website to assist
consumers in identifying safe pharmacies
they can log on to safe dot pharmacy
type in the name of the online source
that they're considering ordering a
prescription drug from and this website
will tell them if it's a recommended
safe pharmacy from which they can
legally purchase their medication or if
it's one of these many known
illegitimate rogue drug outlets that
they absolutely want to avoid
ed what message do you hope to send to
our audience that's listening and
and you know as far as purchasing
medication online
well there's there's two things the
first is that these counterfeit
medications these counterfeit pills have
just flooded the online market so if you
go outside of legitimate channels to get
a prescription pill you have to assume
that it's counterfeit it's fake and many
of those fakes are made with deadly
chemicals like fentanyl
and the other one that is that in this
age of these powerful synthetics
unfortunately just one pill can kill and
my wife mary and i started an
organization song for charlie.org to
warn young people specifically and
parents and teachers about these new
risks in the age of synthetics
and where can folks go for more
information caroline
i would recommend that folks go to
safe.pharmacy
again it's a good tool for identifying
safe pharmacies there's educational
material out there we also have a link
to song for charlie.org on that website
as well
thank you and thanks to both of you for
joining us
thank you thank you
you