Copyright 2000 The New York Times Company
The New
York Times
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March 21, 2000, Tuesday, Late Edition - Final
SECTION: Section A; Page 18; Column
1; National Desk
LENGTH: 905 words
HEADLINE: U.S. and Thai Officials Attack Internet Sales
of Medicine
BYLINE: By ROBERT PEAR
DATELINE: WASHINGTON, March 20
BODY:
Federal officials said today that they had,
for the first time, shut down foreign Web sites involved in the fast-growing
business of selling prescription drugs over the
Internet to American consumers.
Agents of the United
States Customs Service joined Thai authorities in raiding online pharmacies
based in Thailand, which officials say is a major overseas source of powerful
steroids, tranquilizers and other drugs that can be bought in the United States
only with a prescription. Twenty-two people were arrested in Thailand and
accused of violating Thai drug laws and export laws. Six people were arrested in
Albany, accused of buying drugs from a Thai online pharmacy. Thai officials are
also investigating possible violations of a new Thai money-laundering law.
American officials said they alerted Thai authorities to the problem and
received excellent cooperation from Thai narcotics and police officers, as well
as from the government agency that regulates food and drug products in Thailand.
American and Thai officials said they had raided offices and warehouses
used by online pharmacies in Bangkok and Chiang Mai, in northwest Thailand. They
seized 20 computers, 245 parcels ready for shipment to the United States and
more than 2.5 million doses of drug products. The drugs included anabolic
steroids, Valium, Viagra, fen-phen and Tylenol with codeine, as well as Xanax, a
tranquilizer, and Rohypnol, a powerful sedative sometimes described as a "date
rape" drug.
The actions are the latest effort by the United States to
deal with the explosive growth of electronic commerce in prescription drugs.
Officials said they planned to use the Thai operation as a model for cooperation
with law-enforcement agencies in other countries.
Federal officials said
they were concerned about drugs imported from dozens of online pharmacies in
Mexico, Switzerland, Britain, New Zealand and elsewhere. It is unclear whether
those countries will cooperate with American investigators.
Raymond W.
Kelly, the commissioner of the Customs Service, said: "Many of these Internet
pharmacies are fly-by-night operations set up overseas to avoid U.S. law. They
have little regard for patient safety."
In December, President Clinton
urged Congress to regulate the sale of drugs over the Internet. His proposals
focused on companies based in the United States. He did not say what he would do
about foreign online pharmacies, which may pose bigger problems because they are
less likely to demand a prescription before selling drugs to Americans.
In 1999, the Customs Service seized 9,725 packages with prescription
drugs mailed to the United States -- about 4.5 times as many as in the previous
year. In the last six months, customs agents in New York, Los Angeles and
Washington have seized more than 2,600 parcels of prescription drugs bought from
Internet pharmacies in Thailand.
A main target of the Thai raids was
Vitality Health Products, in Bangkok, whose Web site promised "prescription-free
pharmaceuticals by e-mail at incredibly low prices."
Customs
investigators in Albany said the agency had intercepted many drug shipments from
Vitality, and the Albany office is leading the American side of the
investigation, with computer experts from the "cybersmuggling center" of the
Customs Service in Fairfax, Va.
An investigator from the smuggling
center is in Thailand, sifting through computer records.
In an interview
today, Kevin A. Delli-Colli, director of the center, said: "Eighty percent of
the customers we identified from the Thai data are in the United States. The
average order was for $200."
Vitality seemed to have a medicine for
every malady:
"Hair loss? Try Minoxidil and Finasteride (Propecia).
Erection problems? Try Viagra, Yohimbine and Trazodone. Aging skin? Try Retin-A
and AHA creams. Poor memory, I.Q.? Try Piracetam, Hydergine and Vinpocetine.
Hormone replacement? Check out testosterone & Premarin."
At its Web
site, Vitality said, "We guarantee to send your order discreetly packed, without
any reference to the contents on the outside of the packet." The company even
had a Web page on "customs problems," which told consumers what to do if an
order was seized.
Customs officials said Vitality filled orders with
drugs obtained from what appeared to be a legitimate pharmacy in Bangkok.
College-age employees took orders, addressed envelopes, wrapped the drugs in
newspaper and stuffed them into greeting cards. Parcels were sent with no return
addresses.
Thomas M. Virgilio, head of the customs office in Albany,
said investigators had arrested people there who bought drugs from Vitality.
"These are not major smugglers, but they generally know that what they're doing
is illegal," he said.
Mr. Virgilio said the imported drugs were
potentially dangerous because the controls over quality were lax. "A lot of this
stuff is being cooked up in somebody's back room in Thailand," he said.
In addition, Mr. Virgilio said, some of Vitality's customers were taking
dangerous combinations of drugs without a doctor's supervision.
In
Chiang Mai, Thai officials, accompanied by United States customs agents,
arrested eight workers in a warehouse for an online pharmacy. After downloading
orders from computers, the authorities said, the employees hid drugs in books,
picture frames and jigsaw puzzle boxes, then shipped them to the United States,
Germany, France and Japan.
http://www.nytimes.com
GRAPHIC: Chart: "INTERDICTIONS: Ordered Online, Sent
From Abroad"
Seizures of prescription drugs sent illegally by mail, for the
fiscal years shown.
Graphs track the number of seizures and
quantity of illegally sent prescription drugs since 1995. (Source: U.S. Customs
Service)
LOAD-DATE: March 21, 2000 
