With the turn of the twenty-first century a new business form made its appearance online. Catering to the needs of the elderly and the uninsured or under insured, online pharmacies began to provide prescription medications at significantly lower prices than local drug stores charged. With the average monetary savings at roughly 80%, even the additional cost of shipping makes shopping at an online pharmacy a good deal.



While there are, as usual in any human endeavor, some fraudulent sites that pretend to offer quality medications and deliver only fraud or placebo pills, most of the online pharmacies are well regulated and safe. Usually the online pharmacy will require a genuine doctor's prescription before they will fill an order. In these establishments a full-time pharmacist will usually be on duty to double-check that the medications are proper for the patient.

The importation of prescription medicine into the United States is still technically illegal. However, with the popularity of online pharmacies and the much more affordable prices they charge, there has been a grassroots movement started to force the government to relax these laws. While technically, postal inspectors are required to confiscate any prescription medicines that enter the country, these laws are seldom enforced and only about five percent of the entire volume is actually inspected and confiscated.

The Federal Drug Administration does not recognize the legitimacy of online pharmacies and insist that only through face to face encounters between patients and a licensed healthcare provider can proper medications be dispensed. The only exceptions they make are that if the drug is imported from Canada, the online pharmacy must be registered with the Secretary of the FDA. The imported drug must be for personal use only and that it be no greater than a ninety day supply.

Other requirements the FDA insist upon in order to legitimize the transaction are that the drug must be accompanied by a valid prescription document and be one of the approved medications on the FDA list and must be in a finished, ready-to-use form. As well as the federal regulations governing the importation of medicinal drugs from online pharmacies, there are the individual state and local ordinances to keep up with. Some local communities will ban their residents from obtaining any drugs online and through the mail and have been known to occasionally seize the medicine and imprison the person for possession of them even if they were obtained with a legitimate prescription form.

The medicines provided by most online pharmacies are quality items as they are usually manufactured by such top brand laboratories as Pfizer and Wyeth. The Indian drug laboratories Cipla and Ranbaxy as well as Israelian Teva Pharmaceutical Industries are also major suppliers to the hundreds of online pharmacies that can be found on the world wide web.

Despite the volatile nature of legislation on using online pharmacies, the practice is increasing yearly. Medical and drug costs continue to escalate in the United States. Since the primary customers are senior citizens, who also control a major voting bloc in the population, this practice is moving towards a decriminalization so long as the company in question has registered and proven itself a legitimate and quality conscious business.

Since restrictions on people physically traveling to other countries for their medication is usually allowed, the growing presence of the internet will soon make mail deliveries a perfectly proper and convenient was to obtain affordable prescription medications in the United States.