An attraction of online pharmacies is drug prices. Shoppers can sometimes obtain 50 to 80 percent or more savings on U.S. prices at foreign pharmacies.
The Washington Post reported that “…millions of Americans have turned to Mexico and other countries in search of bargain drugs…U.S. Customs estimates 10 million U.S. citizens bring in medications at land borders each year. An additional 2 million packages of pharmaceuticals arrive annually by international mail from Thailand, India, South Africa and other points. Still more packages come from online pharmacies in Canada.”
Some people in the US, including some legislators, favor accessing foreign-made prescription drugs to lower Americans’ health costs. According to a Wall Street Journal/Harris Online poll in 2006, 80 percent of Americans favor importing drugs from Canada and other countries. President Obama’s budget supports a plan to allow people to buy cheaper drugs from other countries. A report in the journal Clinical Therapeutics found that U.S. consumers face a risk of getting counterfeit drugs because of the rising Internet sales of drugs, projected to reach $75 billion by 2010.
In the United States, there are two verification programs for online pharmacies that are recognized by the National Association of Boards of Pharmacy (NABP). One is the Verified Internet Pharmacy Practice Sites Program (VIPPS), which is operated by the NABP and was created in 1999. The Food and Drug Administration refers Internet users interested in using an online pharmacy to the VIPPS program. The other is LegitScript, which as of September 2010 had approved over 340 Internet pharmacies as legitimate and identified over 47,000 “rogue” Internet pharmacies.