New campaign warns of unsafe online pharmacies

Silver Spring, MD – The Food and Drug Administration is urging consumers to avoid unsafe online pharmacies as part of a new campaign.

The BeSafeRx: Know Your Online Pharmacy campaign launched in October to coincide with Talk About Prescriptions Month. The campaign webpage features fact sheets, digital toolkits, an interactive map to find licensed sites for buying medicine and a video in which FDA’s National Health Fraud Coordinator Gary Coody explains how to avoid unlicensed online pharmacies.

Online pharmacies may provide drugs without a prescription and at cheap prices, but the products may be fake or expired, or include harmful ingredients, FDA warns.