If there is one online truth you can take to the bank, its that spammers will find a way to manipulate any and all possible outlets to reach consumers. We have all received the spam emails from rogue pharmacies, touting cheap drugs without a prescription. Not even Google and MSN can stop them from exploiting there advertising systems, and now they have moved on to YouTube.

YouTube has recently received a flood of new videos publicizing online pharmacy web sites that allow customers to purchase drugs online without a prescription. The videos are cheaply made and get straight to the point. According to the Huffington Post, in one video

a camera slowly pans around a sealed bottle of the stimulant Adderall before zeroing in on a cascade of pills poured on top of a laptop computer. “Buy Adderall online now from our new online store: click the link in the top right hand corner to buy now,” says a pop-up box at the screen’s base. At one point last month the clip had pulled in nearly 5,000 viewings.

A new study done over the past 4 months by the students at Columbia University’s Stabile Center for Investigative found around 170 videos advertising no prescription sell of controlled substances which had received 65,000 hits. They even went to one of the sites advertised and bought generic Prozac without a prescription.

These types of rogue pharmacies are looking to take advantage of consumers, and you need to look out for yourself. Never purchase drugs online from an un-reputable, unreliable, or unknown source, especially if they don’t require an original doctors prescription. Save money safely by ordering from verified online Canadian pharmacies. Join Canadian Online Pharmacies today.

The National Association of Boards of Pharmacy (NABP) last week released a report on online pharmacies that contained some startling claims.

Among other things, the NABP attempts to link Canadian online pharmacies to terrorism:

…purchasing medications from unknown and illegal sources via the Internet and other means is compromising the US medication distribution system and making US citizens vulnerable to bioterrorism attacks.

I guess it’s possible this is a valid threat — but frankly, it seems more like a scare tactic tied to a hot-button issue.

The NABP is widely quoted in the media on questions pertaining to Canadian pharmacies. Unfortunately, the NABP’s pattern has been to overhype the dangers of online pharmacies and to link unsafe, unlicensed foreign pharmacies with legitimate pharmacies that are licensed and in good standing with the Canadian government.

The NABP wants you to think that law-abiding, decent Canadian pharmacies are just as bad as the Russian crime syndicates that spam your inbox with misspelled solitications for Viagra. This is flat-out wrong.

The NABP’s “educational” efforts on online pharmacies have been subsidized, in no small part, by Big Pharma. Big Pharma loses money when consumers buy their medications from Canadian pharmacies. So the organization tends to take an extreme stance, overstating its case and confusing consumers.

In fact, the NABP report contains statements that appear to be simply inaccurate. For example, the press release touting the report states:

An alarming number of Internet drug outlets advertising on search engines flagrantly offer prescription medicine, including controlled substances, without a valid prescription… Many of these sites violate the recently adopted Ryan Haight Online Pharmacy Consumer Protection Act, which prohibits the dispensing of controlled substance medications over the Internet without a valid prescription that has included a face-to-face physical examination.

I am curious which pharmacies and search engines the NABP is referring to, since Google is careful to only accept advertising from pharmacies that have been verified by PharmacyChecker.com. PharmacyChecker only approves pharmacies that meet stringent standards, including requiring an original doctor’s prescription based on an in-person consultation.

Certainly, if you do a Google search on Viagra or other medications that consumers commonly seek online, you will find the search results littered with online pharmacies — many of them fraudulent and claiming to be Canadian (when in most cases they aren’t). But this is not search engine advertising; these are organic search results, which Google has no control over.

Frankly, I think the evidence is clear that Google, with PharmacyChecker as its verification authority, has done a good job of separating legitimate pharmacies from fraudulent ones in its AdWords advertising.

So while you should certainly be cautious when buying drugs online, you shouldn’t believe every scary thing you read, either. For the truth about Canadian pharmacies, read this.