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Authorities fighting against Internet drug purchases

By Hayli Fellwock, -- 270-783-3240

Sunday, January 16, 2005

The Internet – seen by some as a tool of thrift where many of the best prices can be found on a variety of products – has been seen lately by federal and state law enforcement officials as an enigmatic setback in the war against drugs.

“We are attempting to formulate a way to enact legislation to deal with Internet drug trafficking,” said State Attorney General Greg Stumbo after a meeting Wednesday to discuss the increasing problem with prosecutors, federal agents and drug detectives from around the country.

The meeting allowed participants to examine current legislation in Florida and Nevada and discuss legal questions such as enforcing individual states’ drug laws across state lines.

Stumbo said highly addictive prescription pills such as Oxycontin and hydrocodone have been streaming into Kentucky on a daily basis, primarily from pharmaceutical Web sites based in Florida. They are then distributed illegally.

“We don’t know how many drugs are coming into this state on a daily basis, but it is an astronomical number, just based on numbers from the state police and prosecutors,” he said. “It’s probably between 50,000 and 100,000 pills a day or more. It’s a huge number.”

Stumbo said he hopes to have a bill drafted for presentation to the legislature in February to help clean up the Internet drug trafficking without treading on honest citizens’ rights to pay a bargain price.

The trend of scouring the Net for deals is becoming increasingly common, said Dale Clark, owner of Springhill Pharmacy.

“I know there are some people – especially senior citizens who have to take quite a bit of drugs – who are looking at the Internet to see if they can get them cheaper that way,” he said. “The problem with the Internet, though, is it begins to bring counterfeit drugs into the system so you may go out there and not know what you’re getting. Unless you know the source you’re going to get it from, you’re taking a great risk.”

Clark also said there is no way for someone to track the drugs they order, which sometimes results in a bogus deal.

“You can run your credit card and everything and never receive your drugs,” he said. “You’re just taking a pretty good risk when you’re ordering over the Internet.”

The inability to track drugs is the exact problem faced by law enforcement and prosecutors.

Currently, pharmacies throughout the state must be licensed and registered with the Kentucky All Schedule Prescription Electronic Reporting System, which eases the drug-tracking process for law enforcement within Kentucky.

But past state lines, there are no requirements for pharmacies, Stumbo said.

“Some out-of-state pharmacies are not licensed in this state and if drugs are shipped in here, we cannot track those,” he said. “We think the first step is to require the pharmacies that provide drugs or scheduled controlled substances to license themselves and report to KASPER.”

As an example, Kentucky is looking to Florida, where pharmacies are licensed and a face-to-face relationship between pharmacists and their patients is required before prescriptions are filled.

“You have to clean up the prescription process,” Stumbo said. “The problem is they are getting prescriptions so what they’re doing is not technically illegal ... (We should) require prescriptions that can only be obtained by being physically present in a doctor’s office.

“We want to try to strike a blow at individuals who are purchasing large quantities of drugs that can be sold on the black market and possessing those drugs with the intent to redistribute them illegally,” Stumbo said. “Ultimately, that stuff makes its way back out onto the streets.”

The Bowling Green-Warren County Drug Task Force, which sent a detective to Wednesday’s meeting at Stumbo’s office in Frankfort, has seen some Internet drug trafficking locally, according to DTF Director Tommy Loving.

“Over the last year and a half, we’ve had about three cases where we’ve gone in and arrested someone for trafficking and found that they were receiving some of their supplies over the Internet,” he said, adding that all the Web sites were based in Florida.

Enforcement may come down to pressing civil charges, Stumbo said.

“There is a problem with enforcement,” he said. “We could have a problem getting them extradited. It’s hard enough getting people extradited for murder. People may know they can sit in Florida and send drugs up here and stay one step ahead of the law. Civil penalties may be more of a deterrent.”

Stumbo also said he is exploring the possibility of trying to identify drugs as they come into the state, which is often via common carriers such as FedEx or UPS. Those companies could identify and barcode incoming packages for tracking purposes, he said.

But the first and foremost issue, Stumbo said, is grasping just how big a challenge law enforcement officers face.

“Everyone knew it was a problem but nobody knew how big it was,” he said. “We’ve just scratched the surface.”

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