14-Year-Old Boy Buys Prescription Drugs Online
Teen Says Process 'Too Easy'
POSTED: Thursday, March 4, 2004
UPDATED: 11:56 am CST March 4,
2004
SAN ANTONIO -- You see the advertisements on the Internet.
No doctors. No prescriptions. Prescription medications delivered to your door.
The Defenders recently found out what happens when Web sites that offer pills get into the hands of children.
With permission from his mother, a 14-year-old boy volunteered to place an order for Xanax, an anti-anxiety drug, that can be addictive.
With a few clicks of the mouse and a few lies on a brief medical questionnaire, the teenager successfully purchased $170 worth of Xanax with a credit card from an offshore pharmacy in Central America.
In less than a month, the prescription drugs arrived addressed to the boy.
"It just makes me very angry that these people can actually get away with this," said Susan Surman, the boy's mother.
"That's just pretty stupid that you can get the drugs that easy off the Internet," the boy said.
Jerry Ellis with the Drug Enforcement Agency in Houston said teenagers purchasing prescription drugs from the Internet is illegal. He said the agency is cracking down on drugs being sold from Web sites in the United States. But Ellis said finding the owners of foreign Web sites poses a challenge. "We could double our personnel and still not have enough to make all the cases we need to," Ellis said.
Despite the availability of prescription drugs on the Internet, there doesn't seem to be a big problem of abuse related to online drugs in San Antonio.
But the fact that it's easy to purchase online drugs worries local doctors.
"Many prescription drugs have very significant side effects," said Dr. Gordon King, of University Hospital.
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