DRUG SALES ON WEB TARGETED

Regulation Is Aim Of State, U.S. Bills

FISTY, Ky. -- A day after police arrested five people suspected of
illegally buying drugs online, state House lawmakers passed a bill
yesterday to regulate Internet pharmacies.

And reflecting national recognition of the problem, two bills to give
states more power over online sales have been filed in Congress with
the backing of the Bush administration.

Kentucky police vowed yesterday to make more arrests in Eastern
Kentucky of people they say are illegally buying drugs online and
picking them up at shipping centers. A stakeout Monday and last week
at the UPS center in Hazard netted a total of nine arrests and
packages containing $12,000 worth of the sedative Xanax and a generic
form of the painkiller OxyContin.

In the community of Fisty -- population 500 -- in Knott County, some
said the sight of UPS trucks has come to mean drug deliveries.

When Josh Bryant hears the trucks rumble into town, he checks the cash
register of his family's convenience store to make sure he can break
the big bills associated with drug dealing, he said. "People come in
asking for change all day, every day, especially after a truck comes
through," the 19-year-old said. "I don't ask questions, but everyone
here knows what's going on."

Investigators said they believe the drugs are being resold in
communities.

"It's caused a resurgence in street-level trafficking," said Dan
Smoot, head of law enforcement for Operation UNITE, a federally funded
anti-drug task force based in Hazard.

Mable Whitmore, 52, a nurse from Fisty, said she knows people who
order drugs online.

"This has created an epidemic here," she said. "There's something
terribly wrong when people can get drugs so easily." Laws porous

Scott Burns, deputy director of the White House Office of National
Drug Control Policy, said his office is aware that "rogue pharmacies"
can operate outside the reach of the law.

"It is unacceptable that a 15-year-old in Kentucky could get on the
Internet, say his elbow is killing him, and two weeks later get a
delivery" of prescription drugs, Burns said.

Under Kentucky law, people can order drugs online without a valid
prescription as long as they give their correct name and address, Smoot
said.

The people arrested in Hazard were booked on suspicion of not using
their names and addresses when ordering the drugs, police said. The
charge of supplying a false name or address on a shipping order is a
Class D felony punishable by up to five years in prison.

In the Hazard bust, police seized 13 packages containing the same
items -- 120 tablets of the sedative Xanax and generic OxyContin, a
highly addictive painkiller.

Maj. Mike Sapp of the Kentucky State Police said state and federal
authorities went to Tampa, Fla., last September to investigate
Internet pharmacies and seized records from a warehouse but no drugs.
Sapp declined to elaborate on the details of the seizures.

"This Internet drug problem has reached huge proportions," Sapp said.
"We tried to react to that to handle the problem before it got
completely out of control."

Federal investigators were able to buy 68 samples of 11 prescription
drugs over the Internet, according to a report released last June by
the Government Accountability Office, the nonpartisan auditing arm of
Congress.

Most of the drugs were bought without providing prescriptions, the GAO
said.

Five U.S. Web sites and all 18 Canadian sites required prescriptions.
But 24 other U.S. sites and 21 foreign Internet pharmacies -- all
outside Canada -- either issued prescriptions based on medical
questionnaires or required no prescription. State bill

By a vote of 97-0, the House yesterday passed a bill aimed at illegal
sales of drugs over the Internet. House Bill 343 would require that
any business that sells controlled substances over the Internet to
customers in Kentucky -- and at least one of its pharmacists -- be
licensed by the state Board of Pharmacy.

That bill would require that any such business receive approval of the
National Association of Boards of Pharmacy as a "verified Internet
pharmacy practice site."

The bill also would require that such companies report shipments of
controlled substances to Kentucky to the state's electronic tracking
system for addictive drugs.

Attorney General Greg Stumbo, who proposed the measure, said in an
interview yesterday the goal is to better control Internet sales. "The
black market for scheduled narcotics is being flooded by people who
are ordering scheduled narcotics over the Internet from
God-knows-where," Stumbo said.

The bill's chief sponsor, Rep. Mike Weaver, D-Radcliff, said on the
House floor that Internet sales have reversed gains in keeping
prescription drugs from being abused.

"The insatiable appetite for illegal drugs was being satisfied by
drugs bought online," he said.

Stumbo's bill would give the state pharmacy board the power to impose
a fine of up to $100,000 for violations of the law requiring licensing
and reporting of sales.

And the bill would make being involved in an illegal drug transaction
over the Internet a Class C felony. That would be elevated to a Class
B felony if the illegal sale resulted in the death or serious injury
of the recipient.

The bill goes to the Senate, where Stumbo said he expects it to pass.
Federal effort

Under identical House and Senate bills introduced last week in
Congress, Internet pharmacy Web sites would be required to clearly
identify the businesses, doctors and pharmacists connected with the
sites.

The Web sites also would have to show the states where the online
pharmacy's doctors and pharmacists were legally authorized to write
and fill prescriptions.

The legislation seeks to bar Web sites from sending customers to
doctors for prescriptions without ever being seen by those doctors.

The measures would give states new powers so state attorneys general
could shut sites anywhere in the country, not just in their home states.

The enforcement power would be similar to the powers states have to
regulate telemarketing, according to the bills' sponsors.

"I strongly support efforts to regulate the sale of prescription drugs
that are sold through the Internet and hope Congress will act quickly
before this growing problem becomes even more widespread," Rep. Harold
"Hal" Rogers, R-5th District, said in a statement yesterday.

John M. Rector, general counsel for the National Community Pharmacists
Association, said he would welcome new laws tightening controls on
Internet sales of prescription drugs.

"It's not like buying cookies," Rector said. "It will make it a lot
easier for the feds to get their hands on domestic sales of these drugs."