ATLANTA, Ga. — Georgians shopping for cheaper prescriptions online are being told to slow down. Attorney General Chris Carr issued a consumer alert Thursday warning that a large share of internet pharmacies are illegal and that some sell counterfeit, expired or improperly stored drugs that can do real harm.
Fake medicines can carry the wrong ingredients, contaminants or even fentanyl, the alert says, and the fakes are not limited to one kind of drug. Cancer treatments, injectables such as Botox, ordinary prescriptions and popular weight-loss and diabetes drugs like Ozempic, Wegovy, Mounjaro and Zepbound have all turned up as counterfeits. Some of the sites also harvest personal and financial information from buyers.
The scale of the problem is large. The attorney general pointed to national pharmacy-board and FDA figures showing roughly 35,000 online pharmacies worldwide, with about 95 percent of them running illegally. Fewer than 4 percent meet U.S. legal and pharmacy standards. Federal drug agents have also warned that illegal sellers are shipping fake pills laced with fentanyl and methamphetamine to buyers who believe the medicine is real.
Warning signs include a site that will sell prescription drugs with no valid prescription, prices that look too good to be true, and no U.S. address you can verify and no licensed pharmacist on staff.
Before ordering, Georgians can look up whether the Georgia Board of Pharmacy has licensed a seller, and that rule reaches mail-order and out-of-state companies that ship into Georgia. The FDA runs a consumer campaign called BeSafeRx that explains how to buy prescription medicine online safely and how to look up a state-licensed online pharmacy.
Suspicious sellers can be reported to the attorney general’s Consumer Protection Division. The FDA also takes reports of websites that appear to be selling medicine illegally, and anyone who has an unexpected reaction or side effect from a drug can report it to the agency through its MedWatch program.
Filed under: Augusta GA Health News
