Almost four years ago, I wrote an article for TG Forum entitled “Viagra, for me?” Yes Virginia, there is a drug for erectile dysfunction (ED) and it may be for you. This can be read by Subscribers to learn about Viagra’s mechanism of action at: www.3dcom.com/tgfs/docs00/medical0012.html Viagra has been a boon to its manufacturer Pfizer and to the Internet Pharmacies which bombard your e-mail with ads for low priced V’I”AGRA, (Sildenafil) and Cialis (Tadalafil).

It is an open Internet drug market out there approaching an estimated $15 billion dollar annual volume. The Internet makes it possible for anybody to buy any drug at any time. To sell drugs over the Internet in the U.S. is not a crime if a legitimate prescription from a Doctor is sent to a legitimate pharmacy verified by the Verified Internet Pharmacy Practice Sites (VIPPS) program online. But we all know that the Spammers are usually off-shore in Mexico, England, Spain, India and Thailand, where they cannot be regulated. When they occasionally operate within the U.S., they are shut-down by the FDA and move offshore. They operate without regulation advertising name brand drugs, but these are never the same brand name drug you might receive from an approved Canadian pharmacy. Pfizer will tell you that there is no generic Viagra produced in the U.S., but they neglect to tell you that they lost their Patent in China after just two years and there are 6,000 pharmaceutical factories in China capable of producing the generic drug Sildenafil. But the sad truth is that even in China, 90% of the Viagra sold in the Sex Shops of Shanghai is fake.

So what do you risk buying online from a Spammer? First you may receive nothing at all for your money. Second, it will certainly not be the dose or company stamped on the counterfeit pill and Third, you will receive a pill whose contents are unknown, containing drugs and contaminants, such as lead, white highway paint, boric acid, or laundry starch, which put your health at risk. So why do these companies continue to flourish. Because they provide a small amount of the generic drug to cause some improvement in people, who have self-diagnosed their needs and they’re cheap. There is a sense of privacy, no doctor’s appointment, no waiting and no pharmacy pick up. So you start with one pill and say maybe two is better and then three and you have no idea, what you are doing to the rest of your system.

We are talking grave health risks, including kidney failure, heart attacks and death which have been documented. In May of 2002, the Manhattan District Attorney, broke up two large rings buying 25,000 counterfeit Viagra from Chinese importers. The cost to the undercover agents ranged from $.50 to more than $6.00 depending where along the chain it was purchased. The wholesale cost of Pfizer’s Viagra was $7.00 at that time. (Similar to Heroin or Cocaine purchases as the drug cartels in Mexico are turning to this market.) The pills looked like Viagra until chopped open, the packaging was almost perfect and the seals were affixed after arrival in this country. Now people in other countries like Belize or Mexico can buy pill stamping and embossing machines for $15,000 so you can make Viagra pills yourself in your basement or set up your at home pharmacy business by buying in bulk. There is no way the FDA or Customs can control the importation of these drugs. They’re too busy looking for terrorists. Recently Customs allowed a shipment of Sildenafil, that they knew to be generic, to enter the U.S. because it was addressed to a large drug wholesaler, whose name they did not reveal. But when Pfizer realized Customs’ mistake, Customs issued a recall. Fake Viagra tablets have entered the U.S. retail Pharmacy chain, because small Pharmacists see this as a way to unethically cut costs. On June 30, 2004, Pfizer issued an alert that a pharmacy in Glendale, CA and one in Fresno, CA was selling a fake lot number 3023803 issued July 2003 with expiration 2006. I will provide you with the link to the Pfizer counterfeit site and even though they tell you how to spot a fake, you can hardly see the difference. Can you pick out the real Viagra seen here?

Theanswerisat: www.pfizer.com/subsites/counterfeit_importation/mn_pharmacist_viagr a.html

So the best advice I can give you is to buy from a large Pharmacy chain who buys from a reputable distributor using the VIPPS program online. The same ideas apply to Internet Hormones, which I’m sure many of you have tried. In a most recent case the FDA has recalled the Herbal preparations, Stamina, a sexual stimulant for men and women as they were tainted with generic Tadalafil and probably imported from China. CAVEAT EMPTOR - BUYER BEWARE!