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Reprinted with permission from Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive and The Washington Post.
The series identifying and documenting the shadow market for prescription drugs resulted from a yearlong investigation by two Washington Post reporters that included more than 500 interviews and the analysis of 100,000 pages of court filings, regulatory cases, investigative reports and computer records.
Using databases at state pharmacy and medical boards, The Post tracked 50,000 prescriptions for narcotics from Internet sites. A breakdown by Zip codes revealed that the preponderance of those drugs flowed to small towns in states with known prescription-abuse problems. Through medical board records, the reporters documented the troubled histories of some of the doctors writing for the online pharmacies, including drug and alcohol abuse, criminal convictions, medical incompetence and financial problems.
The Post reviewed more than 250 lawsuits and criminal cases involving illicit wholesalers, pharmacies, counterfeiters and online drugstores from New York to Los Angeles. To show how tainted medication is introduced into the legitimate distribution chain, reporters also obtained wholesalers' invoices and purchase orders and matched those against records provided by a dozen patients.
Interviews were held with security investigators for drugmakers, state and federal regulators, law enforcement officers, hospital pharmacy buyers, victims of bad medicine, Internet pharmacy operators and felons convicted of drug diversion and Internet fraud. In all, reporters traveled to 12 states, Canada and Mexico. More than 50 Freedom of Information Act requests were also filed.
Staff researchers Alice Crites and Lucy Shackelford and computer database editor Sarah Cohen contributed to the series.
This article appeared in the Washington Post on October 19, 2003.
Copyright 2003, Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive and The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved. www.washingtonpost.com.
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