Buying drugs online exposes the risk of counterfeit products. The Ministry of Health is launching a campaign to help Internet users buy safely.
The drug is not a product like any other, but it is now for sale on the internet. The decree was published on July 12th. The Ministry of Health has therefore launched today an information campaign on the online sale of drugs. Its purpose is to prevent internet users from falling victim to fraudulent sites selling counterfeit, falsified or mislabelled medicines. Counterfeit products, “in addition to their therapeutic ineffectiveness, can be toxic,” recalls the ministry.
Deployed on the web, this campaign is based on simple messages such as “On the Internet, it’s not easy to recognize a fake medicine” or “Beware of counterfeits, they are dangerous for your health. These banners distributed on the sites of all the ministries but also on commercial sites with a large audience, and sites devoted to health recall the rules of this form of e-commerce, and in particular that online sales sites must be backed by at an existing physical pharmacy. In addition, Internet users are invited to consult the list of French sites authorized by the public authorities. A reminder that is needed given the multiplication of the number of illegal sites. At the end of August, more than a hundred had been identified by the Order of Pharmacists.
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