In the Wild West of cyberspace, the Customs Service has taken on the role of Wyatt Earp, closing in on those who would contaminate it with violence, pornography, and most recently, drugs — in this case "legal" drugs. Customs recently succeeded in disrupting the illegal, international distribution of prescription drugs — drugs that would be legal only if purchased in the United States with a valid prescription.

Early in 1999, officials from Royal Thai Customs contacted the Customs attaché in Bangkok about some pills of undetermined composition. Thai Customs had found them in packages bound for the United States. (Royal Thai Customs detects, seizes, and reports Schedule I narcotics to U.S. Customs but has no legal obligation to report lower-Schedule drugs.) Tests had determined that these were not Schedule I narcotics.

Over the next six months, Thai Customs officers detected several more packages of pharmaceuticals bound for the United States. Then, in a striking instance of international cooperation — striking because it was achieved solely with a request from our Customs attaché in Bangkok — the Royal Thai Customs administration committed four of its officers, and the Thai postal service committed five of its full-time personnel, to a project aimed at detecting and intercepting prescription drugs bound for America. Thailand's Food and Drug Administration, which was instrumental in identifying the controlled substances, also participated.

The pills — typically tranquilizers, diet pills, Viagra, steroids, or codeine compounds — were usually hidden inside printed material like books, greeting cards, or calendars, or inside plastic containers like videotape boxes. The return address on these packages was, of course, bogus.

In a recent press release, Commissioner Kelly noted that "many of these Internet pharmacies are fly-by-night operations that ... have little regard for patient safety ... [and] are only interested in making a fast buck." Indeed, according to Customs' CyberSmuggling prescription Desk Officer Claude Davenport, the culprit Web pages are "dropping off the Internet like flies," forcing importers to search the Web more deeply to find other illegal sites.

And as for quality control? As you might expect, it's zilch. Unlike domestic pharmacies, there's no assurance the mail-order drugs are not counterfeit, and if the patient is treating him or herself, how does he or she handle an adverse reaction?

This case is especially noteworthy because it's the first time that our government has played a major role in closing the Web sites of foreign companies that have been exporting drugs only available domestically with a prescription. Twenty-two people were arrested in Thailand for violating Thai export regulations, and as U.S. Customs Today goes to press, six people have been arrested in the United States for illegally buying prescription drugs, sometimes in quantities that suggest they may also be "playing doctor" to friends and acquaintances.