RioRunner," as he calls himself, has steroids to sell. The drugs, used by athletes to bulk up muscle and lose fat, are illegal in the United States, but "Rio" is not huddled on a street corner or distributing coded notes in a gym.
Instead, the dealer posted on the "Elite Fitness" Web site under the not-so-subtle title "Looking for a Steroid Source?"
"High quality, pharmaceutical steroids from Brazil - Deca, Sustanon, Test Cyp., Anadrol-50, Proviron, HCG, Clomid, Nolvadex," read a RioRunner message posted Aug. 12. "Send message to [Web address] for prices and more info."
The ad is just one of 580 messages on the anabolic steroid bulletin board listed on the Elite Fitness Internet page. Within 24 hours, three replies are posted publicly; there is no way to know how many people e-mailed the dealer privately.
"Can I get cycle and try it out, then pay you afterwards?? I promise I'll pay! Really I will! Please? Geez," responded "Pokey."
It's not just steroids that the World Wide Web has to offer. Fertility drugs, marijuana seeds, Viagra and Valium are all just a click and a credit card away. Thousands of drug Web sites have popped up on the Internet, and more appear every day.
The Web has become a virtual drug superstore, overwhelming drug agents and troubling the medical community as medicines are bought without appropriate professional guidance.
"It's hard to wrap your arms around the problem because it's something we're just becoming aware of," said Susan Winckler, director of policy and legislation for the American Pharmaceutical Association in Washington.
Although some of the trade involves people buying hard-core illegal drugs such as heroin, most of it involves people illegally buying anabolic steroids or prescription drugs from countries that sell those drugs over the counter, said Gene Weinschenk, director of the Customs Cybersmuggling Center in Sterling, Va.
Valium, for example, requires a prescription in the United States but is sold over the counter in Mexico. It is illegal to buy a prescription drug without a prescription.
Prescriptions themselves can also be bought online. At the "Pill Box Pharmacy," filling out a simple online questionnaire and paying $85 could get you a cyber-prescription and an order of Viagra. Just click to promise that you're an adult and that you'll answer all the questions truthfully, including the one that inquires whether you're a male.
Law-enforcement agencies say they are overwhelmed by the sheer number of web pages.
"The U.S. laws haven't really been updated to address the Internet issue," said Terry Tarham, special agent and spokesman for the Drug Enforcement Agency in Arlington, Va. "We're not really in a position to handle the onslaught of access people have out there to abuse."
Authorities say it's hard to find and prosecute cases because Internet users constantly change their online names. Moreover, Internet service providers don't always keep information on the people who put up the sites, which can easily be taken down and reposted under another name.
Besides, "having the Web site is legal," said Weinschenk. "Sending illegal drug material through the mail is not."
While it's hard to prosecute the overseas sellers, Weinschenk said, U.S. buyers can be prosecuted for smuggling illegal drugs into the country. U.S. Customs and the federal Drug Enforcement Agency have several investigations under way, but neither has closed a case yet. Maryland State Police have set up a computer-crime unit, but its spokesman, Det. Sgt. Barry Leese, said that the unit deals mainly with fraud and child exploitation and that he was unaware of any Internet drug investigations.
Some state medical agencies are starting to intervene, too. The Wisconsin Medical Board recently stopped a Milwaukee doctor who was advertising Viagra prescriptions on the Internet.
"The doctor was advertising that people could call his office and answer a few questions on the phone and, if the answers were right, get the prescription that way, without having seen a doctor," said Arthur Thexton, prosecuting attorney for the Wisconsin State Department of Regulation and Licensing. He said the Internet advertisement was not illegal but the board did not feel it was good medical practice to prescribe a new drug without a visit to the doctor.
"I believe he wrote several hundred prescriptions before we stopped him," Thexton said.
Michael Compton, the executive director of the Maryland Board of Physician Quality Assurance, said the board was looking into several cases concerning doctors and the Internet, but could say nothing more because no cases are closed yet.
"Part of the problem is, we only have subpoena power in our state boundaries," Compton said. "And the difficulty is, if someone here is ordering online from someone in another state, they are in effect leaving the state electronically."
Although Viagra sites are popular, anabolic steroids are far and away the top Internet seller, with marijuana seeds coming in second, said Weinschenk, of the Customs Cybersmuggling Center.
"Because of the emphasis on athletic performance here [in the United States], even at a very early age - 3, 4, 5 years old - there's a lot of interest in steroids," he said. "A lot of it comes from Europe and the former Soviet bloc where the rules are more lax."
The Customs Cybersmuggling Center started in August 1997 to combat child pornography on the Internet and soon expanded to include drug sales. However, there are only eight agents in the center, and Weinschenk hopes Congress will approve more to fill the expanded role.
He said it is hard to know how many drug overdoses and drug-related arrests have to do with purchases made over the Internet because police nationwide don't keep track of such cases.
Police say most of the purchases are made at first through e-mail, either by a public posting such as RioRunner's or through word-of-mouth. It begins with two or three e-mail exchanges, rarely tracked by authorities, in which buyer and seller sniff each other out. Then the buyer sends a money order or hands over a credit card number - "You'd have to be an idiot to do that," Weinschenk says - and decides how he or she wants the drugs shipped.
"It usually takes only two or three e-mails before they start asking you - do you want it sent in hollowed-out books or whatever," Weinschenk said.
Customs agents and Post Office employees are trained to look for mail coming from certain countries or companies, but most dealers send the drugs under another name, plus it's easy to miss a small package among thousands being mailed, Weinschenk said.
Beyond any illegalities, several medical and business watchdog agencies have posted warnings about buying drugs in cyberspace, and pharmacists say they are concerned about people using prescription drugs incorrectly, receiving bogus drugs or ignoring true illnesses by taking painkillers.
Yvonne D'Antonio, a pharmacist and safe medication management fellow at the Center for Proper Medication Use in Philadelphia said she recently visited Mexico and "my big thrill was to see what kind of drugs were being sold over the counter. I went to a gift shop, kind of like a Kmart, and just in the display case there was heart medicine, blood pressure medicine. I was totally amazed."
The strict U.S. approval process is to ensure safety, she pointed out, and even with the tougher restrictions, several drugs a year are pulled from America's shelves.
With approved prescription drugs, there are dangers without a doctor-patient-pharmacist relationship, D'Antonio said.
"There have been 30 cases of men who have had underlying vascular problems and [took] Viagra who have died," D'Antonio said. "There are a lot of dangers. If you're ordering antibiotics without seeing a doctor, you could be building up a resistance and it won't help you fight the infection.
There are sites that require prescriptions, offering allegedly cheaper prices in return. But both D'Antonio and Winckler, of the American Pharmaceutical Association, were leery of what could be in the little bottles.
Winckler said the federal General Accounting Office in March did an evaluation of the foreign drug supplies that were being sent legally to the United States for local manufacturing needs.
"There were a lot of flaws in what they were sending over, and if that's what they were sending over to the FDA and it was flawed, who knows what is being sent over privately?" she said.
Pub Date: 8/30/98