Characteristics of online pharmacies selling Adderall

Abstract

Objectives: Adderall (amphetamine-dextroamphetamine) is a controlled substance with harmful adverse effects if abused or misused. We assessed the availability of Adderall from common search engines, and evaluated the safety and marketing characteristics of online pharmacies selling Adderall. Design: Cross-sectional study. Setting and participants: From December 2019 to February 2020, the phrase "buy Adderall online" was queried in four search engines: Google (N ¼ 100), Bing (N ¼ 100), Yahoo (N ¼ 50) and DuckDuckGo (N ¼ 50). Online pharmacies that claimed to sell Adderall and had unique Uniform Resource Locators, were active, free-access, and in English language were included. Outcome measures: Online pharmacies were categorized as rogue, unclassified, or legitimate on the basis of LegitScript classifications. Safety and marketing characteristics, and costs were collected. Results: Of the 62 online pharmacies found to sell Adderall, 61 were rogue or unclassified. Across all rogue and unclassified online pharmacies, prescriptions were not required (100%), pharmacist services were not offered (100%), and quantity limits were not placed on the number of Adderall purchases (100%). Rogue and unclassified online pharmacies appealed to cost, offering price discounts (61%), bulk discounts (67%), and coupon codes (70%). Contrary to their claims, cheaper prices were available for all formulations and dosages of Adderall from GoodRx than from these online pharmacies. Rogue and unclassified online pharmacies promoted and enabled the illicit purchase of Adderall, appealing to privacy (74%), offering purchase through cryptocurrency (74%), and claiming registration or accreditation of their sites (33%). Conclusion: Rogue online pharmacies are pervasive in search engine results, enabling the illicit purchase of Adderall without a prescription. Consumers are at risk of purchasing Adderall, a medication with high abuse potential, from unsafe sources. Law enforcement, regulatory agencies, and search engines should work to further protect consumers from unregistered and illegitimate online pharmacies selling Adderall.

COVID-19 Treatments Sold Online Without Prescription Requirements in the United States: Cross-sectional Study Evaluating Availability, Safety and Marketing of Medications

“…Most of the illegitimate online pharmacy websites analyzed in this study (75/82, 92%) hosted their servers in a country different from that listed on their website. This is in line with other studies that have reported similar differences in server and listed locations [ 35 ]. Although this difference does not verify that online pharmacies’ physical locations are different from what are reported, it does raise the concern that many of these pharmacies are misleading patients by reporting to be located in one country but are actually dispensing from another country.…”

“…Prior studies have suggested that the cost of medications online vis-à-vis brick-and-mortar stores differs depending on the product [34][35][36][37]. Here, we report similar findings.…”

Accessibility of Low-cost Insulin From Illegitimate Internet Pharmacies: Cross-sectional Study

“…Beyond concerns related to medication quality, there is also concern regarding the lack of services offered by illegitimate internet pharmacies [ 15 ]. In choosing illegitimate internet pharmacies, patients opt out of medication counseling, monitoring, and drug-drug interactions checking that pharmacists and other health care professionals provide to ensure proper medication use [ 16 ].…”

The modern Russian pharmaceutical market: consumer attitudes towards distance retailing of medicines

“…Thanks to many studies aimed at identifying the cause of widespread illegal Internet pharmacies, such as the scientific work of Vida et al [ 20 ] or Penley et al [ 21 ], the global pharmaceutical community has concluded that online surveillance bodies need to be improved.…”