People are putting their lives at risk by being able to buy prescription-only medicines from online pharmacies without proper checks, pharmacists have warned.
An investigation by the BBC has found 20 online pharmacies selling restricted drugs without checks, such as being signed off by a GP.
In total, the BBC was able to buy more than 1,600 various prescription-only pills by entering false information without challenge.
The General Pharmaceutical Council (GPhC) has called for extra checks to be put in place to protect people when buying some drugs online.
Thorrun Govind, a pharmacist, health lawyer and former chair of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society, also highlighted to the BBC that currently there is something of a “wild west” when it comes to buying medicines online.
“The current guidance basically tells pharmacies to be robust, but do that in your own way, and we know that under this current system, patients have died,” she said.
Pharmacies and prescribing
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Many people choose to use online pharmacies for convenience. Such businesses can sign-off prescription-only drugs if they employ a qualified pharmacist prescriber.
The parents of a woman who died in 2020 after accidentally overdosing on medicines she bought online have also called for stricter rules.
Katie Corrigan, from St Erth in Cornwall, developed an addiction to painkillers after experiencing neck pain.
Her GP had stopped supplying the drug after realising she had been allowed to request new prescriptions prematurely and had been prescribed too much.
Instead, Corrigan, 38, was able to buy a painkiller and a drug used to treat anxiety from multiple online pharmacies without notifying her GP.
Current guidance from the GPhC says online prescribers must get “all the information they need” to ensure a medicine is safe and appropriate for an individual patient. It also states “high-risk, habit-forming medicines”, such as those Corrigan was able to buy, should not be sold online without additional safeguards.
Yet some of the medicines she bought still appear to be readily available from some online pharmacies, the BBC has found.
One online pharmacy, for example, sent a marketing email urging the BBC researcher to buy an addictive painkiller “before time runs out”.
Unlike illegitimate, black market sellers, licensed online pharmacies are regulated by the GPhC and employ qualified pharmacists and prescribers. They are expected to carry out risk assessments to determine which medicines can be safely sold online, and the regulator can take action if they are deemed to be practising dangerously.
But Govind told the BBC the guidance from the regulator is too vague, and does not state clearly enough what checks online pharmacies should be conducting.
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“This has led to such a variation, with some online pharmacies asking for checks like video consultations, while others seem to let you simply click on the drug you want and go forward to pay,” she said.
