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Vermont News: The Ryan Haight Online Pharmacy Consumer Protection Act
Published in the September 2009 Vermont Board of Pharmacy Newsletter
The Ryan Haight Online Pharmacy Consumer Protection Act amends the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act to address illegal diversion of prescription drugs through the Internet. It was signed into law in October 2008, and became effective April 13, 2009. Ryan Haight was a 17-year-old boy who easily acquired prescription narcotics from an online Web site by simply filling out a questionnaire. A doctor who never saw Haight wrote the prescription and the drugs were mailed directly to his house. On February 12, 2001, Haight overdosed on the narcotic and died at the young age of 18. The Ryan Haight Online Pharmacy Consumer Protection Act addresses the problem of Internet prescription drug diversion in three ways.
First, it requires Internet pharmacy Web sites to display information identifying the business, pharmacist, and physician associated with the Web site.
Second, the act bars the selling or dispensing of a prescription drug via the Internet when the Web site has referred the customer to a doctor who then writes a prescription without ever seeing the patient.
Third, the act provides states with new enforcement authority modeled on the Federal Telemarketing Sales Act that will allow a state’s attorney general to shut down a rogue site across the country rather than solely in that specific state.
