The problem of high drug prices in the United States of America is well-known. They have been well documented and written about many times. But little has changed to begin to fix the problem that blights the lives of people on a daily basis. With the pandemic that began towards the end of 2019, the situation has become worse for many people. Jobs have been lost, businesses destroyed, and livelihoods decimated. But life goes on and people continue to get sick, perhaps more so thanks to the restrictions placed on everyone’s lives.
The internet has done a lot to make people’s lives easier, democratizing access to information, and more. Where medications are concerned, going online for your medical needs can help you find cheap pills. Thanks to the pandemic continuing into 2021, more people than ever need access to cheap medications because even more people now don’t have access to health insurance.
While there is easy access to medications online, not everything is always as it seems when you try to purchase. You might be putting yourself in more danger than you imagine when you buy meds from outside the USA.
There was a study conducted by the National Center for Health Statistics to find out if participants had purchased drugs from abroad. Researchers analyzed data between 2015 and 2017, finding that older people, immigrants, and those without adequate insurance cover, and patients with financial problems were more likely to purchase pills from other countries. These people were also more likely to get their medical advice online.
The primary reason for people doing this was to save money, and in the current ongoing situation, there are likely to be many more people who find themselves turning to the internet for prescription drugs.
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Is it Legal to Import Drugs from Another Country?
If you are to read what the FDA has to say about importing drugs, you might be a little confused. They state that most of the time it is illegal for individuals to import drugs for personal use. However, when you read into it further, you’ll find that this is only for pills that are not approved for use in the United States.
Bearing in mind that most of the drugs you can buy online are already legally approved for sale in the US, it seems like they have this advice around the wrong way. Surely, most of the time you are going to be buying pills that are FDA approved for use and, therefore, legal to import.
And even when the drugs you are importing aren’t FDA approved, they don’t typically object anyway. As long as you don’t import more than a 3 month supply of your medications, you are unlikely to have a problem. If your doctor has approved the medications for your use, they aren’t promoted to US residents, and they don’t present an unreasonable risk to you, the FDA doesn’t really seem to care what you import.
Remember the criteria you need to follow to import drugs legally that aren’t already approved by the FDA:
- Stick to a 3 month supply
- It is a treatment that isn’t available in the USA
- The pills shouldn’t be a risk
- You cannot promote the medication
- They are for personal use
Finding a Reputable Source of Medications
What you really need to be careful about when buying medications online, is the pharmacy you use. If you don’t know the things to look for, you could run into problems.
It is possible for almost anyone to upload a website to the internet in only minutes, and for this reason, you need to be very careful when searching for pills online. A good place to start is online pharmacy reviews 2021, which will have investigated the pharmacy sites you are interested in using and discovered whether they are reputable or not.
It is advisable to get the opinion of an expert because one website that sells pills is likely to look as good as any other if you don’t know what to look for. Unfortunately, it is very easy for the unscrupulous people of the world to set up scam pharmacy websites designed to prize your hard-earned money from you.
What Can Go Wrong If You Don’t Buy From a Legit Pharmacy?
Buying pills online can lead to you giving your credit card information to anonymous people in another country. This opens you up to having fraud committed against you, but this isn’t the only thing you should be concerned about.
We have heard of cases where people have had their credit card details cloned and then they find purchases have been made in a country they’ve never visited. Since the online pharmacy will also ask you a lot of personal information, you are also putting yourself at risk of identity theft.
You might also pay for some pills, which could come to hundreds of dollars, and then find you receive nothing in return. When you contact the pharmacy concerned you probably won’t get a response. You can then try to reclaim your money back from your credit card company if you use that method of payment, but if you didn’t it might be more difficult.
While these problems can disrupt your life and cause you to lose some money, they pale into insignificance compared to the more likely danger.
Low-Quality Medications
A bigger risk with buying pills online is low-quality drugs. If you do actually get some pills when you order from an unreputable pharmacy store, can you tell that the pills are good just by looking at them?
They might look exactly the same or very close to the pills you’ve taken previously. But in reality, you have no way of knowing what is contained inside those pills.
While to be safe, you could get the pills tested. However, this will be prohibitively expensive and completely wipe out any savings you had made buying the pills online.
If the pills you have bought do not have the correct ingredients and are either low-quality drugs or counterfeit, there could be very serious ramifications to your health.
Even if the pills do have the correct ingredients, there could still be problems. The pills may not have the correct dosage of active ingredients expected. There can be problems if there are higher dosages than expected and different problems with a lower dosage than stated on the packaging.
If there are less active ingredients included than there should be, you might think that the pills are working. You will probably see some of the positive effects you expect from when you have taken the pills before, while in fact, the drugs you have taken aren’t really producing the results they should.
This can lead to a worsening of your condition without you realizing it. You may then have to undergo more severe medical interventions to fix your health problems.
If there are higher levels of active ingredients than there should be in the pills, you may face unexpected results including overdosing.
There is also the risk of unexpected ingredients being in the pill. There have been instances of rat poison being found in pills bought from another country. Since these pills may have been manufactured in unsanitary conditions by people who are unqualified to do the job, the risks of buying pills from another country can be substantial.
Choosing Which Countries to Buy Your Pills From
When you are looking to buy pills in the United States from a foreign country, Canada is the obvious choice. They have a similar level of pharmacy regulation, and they are close by, so delivery won’t take too long.
While there are many Canadian pharmacies online that you may come across, in reality, they frequently have nothing to do with Canada. And even if they are really based in Canada, the pills might not be coming from that country.
Often you will find, if you check the small print on the site, that the pills are really coming from another country like India or China. This will mean that the pills won’t be being dispensed to the same standards and will take far longer to reach you. Countries like these generally have low or even no standards for the sale of medication online.
Generally, other western countries will have a similar or sometimes even better level of protection for people who buy pills online. The UK and Europe have similar standards that are higher than is offered by Canada. But to make sure that you are really getting pills from those countries, you need to check online pharmacy reviews 2021.
Conclusions
If you don’t have sufficient insurance coverage to pay for your drugs, purchasing from another country can seem like a great option. You can make great savings and still get quality medications to combat your medical condition. But you do have to be careful.
If you just try to make a purchase on the first store you find, you could run into significant problems that you later come to regret. Instead of making mistakes, check out some online pharmacy reviews 2021 from people who know what the problems there can be.
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POSSIBLE ALTERNATIVES
There are also quite many online pharmacies on the net that have proved themselves to be excellent ones. We keep an eye on them as well. They get into our reviews from time to time, and you can see them on the pages of our site.We have placed the best online pharmacies into a separate list on the Pharmacy Ratings page. Ratings of online pharmacies that have successfully passed verification and check by our team: Link>>>
