Amazon can be your place to pick up prescription drugs even without a prescription, Slate reports.
Physician Ford Vox discussed the ease with which his wife bought prescription strength medication from overseas on Amazon.
A quick search for the medication Vitara Clinda Gel (as low as $6.99 plus shipping) brings up more than 100 results. Searching for its prescription-regulated ingredient, clindamycin, yields more than 300 results. Clindamycin, Vox writes, is known to cause severe and even deadly reactions if used improperly. There's definitely a reason it's not supposed to be easy to get.
Vox writes there are many more strong and dangerous drugs available on Amazon that would usually require a doctor's signature. Prescription-strength muscle relaxers and antibiotics, which can contain harmful compounds and are lethal with misuse, are available for sale on the online retailer.
Vox says:
I asked Amazon public relations manager Erik Fairleigh a number of specific questions about how illegal products make it through to the site to end up being sold to Amazon customers. I wanted to know if Amazon employees manually review each product before it is listed, why products are removed following reporting like this only to reappear later on the site, and if Amazon considers itself protected from liability when third-party distributors are selling illegal products to Amazon's customers. Fairleigh declined to answer these questions, but he did point me to Amazon's policy on counterfeiting, which attempts to distance the company from the third-party sellers in its marketplace by saying "it is each seller's responsibility to source and sell only authentic products." The policy goes on to state that, "if we determine that a seller account has been used to engage in fraud or other illegal activity, remittances and payments may be withheld or forfeited."
Read the whole article on Slate.
Disclosure: Jeff Bezos is an investor in Business Insider through his personal investment company Bezos Expeditions.