Next Avenue: Why Canadian Online Pharmacies Are So Dangerous

In an article written by Next Avenue’s Emily Gurnon, Partnership for Safe Medicines board member Jim Dahl explains why shopping at unlicensed online pharmacies is anything but harmless to U.S. consumers.

While patients might be lured to unlicensed pharmacy website with the promise of savings, a counterfeit drug that doesn’t help your health is no bargain. Foreign, unlicensed drug sellers are not motivated to insure the safety and efficacy of their products. This is the warning that PSM’s Jim Dahl shares with Next Avenue. “You really don’t know what you’re getting,” Dahl tells Next Avenue. “The drugs you think you’re ordering from Canada are more often than not from Turkey, China, Fiji, Panama or any of a host of other countries.”

Dahl, former assistant director of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s Office of Criminal Investigations, and a more than 20 year veteran in law enforcement, connects fake online pharmacies with other crimes. Reports Next Avenue, “The operators of the illegal online pharmacies may not set out to harm people, Dahl says. ‘But inherent in their business model is this lack of safety, and it’s easy for the people they deal with — who are also criminals — to put anything into that inventory.’”

While a fake online pharmacy may seem benign, Dahl notes that “counterfeit drugs often finance organized crime, terrorism, child and slave labor and human trafficking.”

Read more about so-called Canadian pharmacies and learn ways to stay safe and buy medicine more affordably.
By S. Imber