LegitScript
Reviews and Complaints

Fraudulent site that claims to be an authority in healthcare and medication. In fact it's a big scam funded by pharmaceutical companies.

legitscript is a company of only one Man, that is register in his own home ! He simple take out any competition, the guy run his own pharmacy. He should be in jail.
This is her register address :

BUSINESS NAME
LEGITSCRIPT LLC

PRIMARY PLACE OF BUSINESS

818 SW 3RD AVE #353
PORTLAND OR 97204 USA

He also have register the .pw dowmain, may be he is afraid to get deindexed by google.

Lies about getting affordable prescription drugs from Canada, in the pocket of Large pharmacies.

Well, I am the guy "on the other side". Don't meddle with any narcotics or mind altering substances, but I do certain things, which our legislators don't like that much anyway. So it was no wonder that one day LegitScripts came after me with a license to kill :) This made me to do some research over my adversaries from LegitScripts. Wow! They appeared to be not so legit.They perform huge job finding and monitoring thousands of online pharmacies. They watch the Internet and reply to any comment made over them. But all this big job requires big money - renting of the office, wages to workers, etc. So, who pays for this? The first answer which comes to mind is that US pharmacy lobby does. Multi-billion US pharmacy industry is now under the strong pressurefrom Indian and Chinese generic manufacturers. Despite the fact that using cheap drugs is literally matter of death or life for many poor peoplein the third world and a matter of huge savings even for relatively rich people in the "first world", US pharmacy lobbydoes not bother about human lives but their pocket only. Let people die, but they want to shut down their competitors at any cost.And such company like LegitScript is pefect choice doing the dirty job for them. They act in extremely aggressive and abusive way, this is what Jews call "hutzpa". They often deliberately lie about their "rights" (unfortunately many of domain registrars subdued). They make registrars trust that their claims are backed by FDA or ICANN, while FDA or ICANN are never in fact involved, all "rights" they delegated to LegitScript is just a couple of EXPLANATORY letters and all this fuss they make all around is coming exclusively from this small, privately owned rogue company. The trick is that they do not provide any official papers but encourage registrars to suspend the domains on their own risk without any court orders. Unfortunately, there were no big lawsuits against registrars so far, but if it come to such lawsuit domain owner has good chances to win.Yes, Legitscript destroyed many narcotics sites, if they stopped with this, I would be the first one to applaud. But they continued their aggression all over the world. I checked many non-US pharmacies with them. I checked websites, which have nothing to do with United States, which do not sellto United States and do not offer any controlled substances indeed, and what was the result? In the best case this poor domestic online pharmacy is labelled as "unapproved" (why the hell Indian or Thai pharmacy needs an approvement from some privately owned US company?). In the worst case this far-away website is marked as "rogue" and is in LegitScript hit list. As of February 2013, LegitScript's website indicated that LegitScript had approved over 250 online pharmacies as meeting LegitScript's standards, and documented over 48, 000 "rogue" online pharmacy websites. Does anyone really believes that only 250 online pharmacies over the world are "white" and 50 000of others are ruled by "organized crime" like Legitscripts labels everybody who oppose them? In order to be "approved" the pharmacy must be US-based pharmacy. Very racist and xenofobic approach, not to mention that after this we cannot rely on legitscript evaluations and cannot trust them indeed.Great, so now you think that they are merely US pharm giants lobbyists? Heh, it appeared to be not so simple. I was really wondered to find some of definitely "rogue"pharmacies to be NOT IN THEIR LIST INDEED!? Ok, maybe they are too busy and didn't noticed all Evil over the Internet?I took one of these rogue pharmacies, which obviously deals with DEA Schedule III controlled drugs - steroid.com and REPORTED it to legitscripts. Just nothing happened. I waited for one month and reported once again, but also to no avail. After waiting some more time and reporting it for the third time and repeating the same actions with some other pharmacies, I realized that I am just wasting my own time - they didn't "rate" any of the reported websites.Even more, I found information that LegitScript fraudulently and covertly registered over a hundred domain names for online pharmas using a single registrar and then turns around and publishes a defamatory paper claiming they (LegitScript) "discovered" that INTERNET BS is a safe haven for illegal drug pharmacy domain name registration. As a result Internet.bs got scared and now is fully "legitscripts compliant", i.e. completely obey all their unlawful orders.This made me to go with another idea. Yes, they receive money from US pharmacy lobby. But from the other side they MIGHT BE connected to organized crime that they claim to fight so desperately. I cannot prove this in the court, this is just my personal conclusion. But I was persuaded that all their"struggle" for the "safety of US customers" is nothing else but shutting down competitors on illegal pill market. Just like Bloods vs Crips, lol.

More here.

Pharmacy Group Lies To Registrars: If We Complain About A Site, It Must Be Taken Down No Questions Asked
from the that's-not-how-it-works dept
This is incredible. Just yesterday we wrote about how EasyDNS won its arbitration case, saying that a registrar cannot takedown and block the transfer of a domain name just on the say so of law enforcement or anyone else not carrying a court order. And, the very next day, EasyDNS is reporting on an absurd letter it has received from the National Association of Boards of Pharmacy, which argues exactly the opposite of what the arbitration panel told EasyDNS.

Incredibly, it says that if it complains about a domain, the registrar must take it down:

"Upon receipt of an abuse notification, some Registrars claim that a court order is required or that they are not violating the laws of the Registrar’s country. Both assertions are wrong."

Except, as EasyDNS points out, the arbitration ruling says that it's the NABP that's wrong, and that a court order is required. Similarly, the NABP claims that registrars must freeze the domains, even without a court order.

You should not allow domain names engaged in the illegal sale or distribution to transfer to another Registrar: the question of legality does not relate to where the Registrar is located, but rather to the activity of the Web site.

But, again, the arbitration ruling, which merely read from ICANN's own rules, says the exact opposite -- noting that you clearly need a court order

The NABP also tries the same direct misreading of ICANN's rules that Public Domain Registry used, to pretend that "fraud" is a reason to deny transfer, but as the arbitration ruling found, that claim is simply incorrect. The "fraud" referenced in the rules is only fraud concerning transfers not fraud in terms of what the website was used for.

There's much more in the letter as well. There is some history here. The NABP is basically an organization designed to artificially inflate the price of drugs in the US, cynically using highly questionable claims to pretend that they're focused on "public safety." For years, the NABP has worked hard to keep legitimate but cheaper versions of drugs outside the US, so that US pharmacies (and the drug companies they work with) can charge increasingly insane prices for drugs. Because they can use the specter of "fake drugs killing people!" they're able to do all sorts of nasty attacks on foreign pharmacies that are selling perfectly legitimate drugs to willing buyers, by claiming that they put people's lives at risk.

And, now, it appears they're going even further in trying to basically create a "SOPA-like" setup, whereby registrars are required to pull down any domain based solely on NABP's say so without any judicial review at all. The fact that this is happening at the same time that City of London Police are doing the same exact thing (at the urging of the legacy music/movie industries) isn't an accident. While the supporters of SOPA insist that there's no new legislation coming, they're all trying to do an end run around all of it, creating something that's even more extreme than SOPA by getting registrars to simply kill sites they don't like based on nothing but a complaint.

EasyDNS's Mark Jeftovic says it all in his blog post about it, noting that this is why they fought back against COICA/SOPA/PIPA:

It really is getting creepy out there.

We now know that we live in a total surveillance society, governments are printing money, going broke, manufacturing consent and lying about nearly everything; while quasi-governmental agencies all over the world are now asserting they have the authority to overturn legal process and basically dictate everybody else's business.

This script is playing out almost verbatim what we wrote only three years ago in "First They Came For The File Sharing Domains".

Who will be the next batch of clowns who tell us they can use liberally interpreted language in a couple of agreements that they aren't even party to to compel us to takedown your website? Let's start a betting pool.

This is why pushing back and standing up for internet freedom is so important. The attempts to control, to censor, to block and to silence are only increasing. The legacy players who can't stand competition or innovation are looking for any way to hold back the future, and that means attacking the public's ability to make use of the internet and to speak freely.

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20140110/12140025836/pharmacy-lobbyists-lie-to-registrars-if-we-complain-about-site-it-must-be-taken-down-no-questions-asked.shtml

Without a court order your domain registrar MUST allow you to transfer your domain, the opinions of LegitScript and NABP mean nothing.

It's almost surreal to be getting this letter from the National Association of Boards of Pharmacy (NABP) addressed to ICANN Registrars requesting that "you adopt and implement policies and procedures, consistent with this letter, ", given the timing of what we just went through with the City of London Police takedown requests.

What are those policies and procedures the NAPB wants all ICANN Registrars to adopt? Glad you asked:
#1 Registrars must investigate and action reports of illegal activity in any jurisdiction anywhere in the world.

They draw from language in the 2013 RAA (which we haven't executed yet) that Registrars "investigate reports of “Illegal Activity, ” including alleged violations of applicable laws (Section 3.18.1) and to take action". By this they mean:

"we wish to formally advise you that the “applicable laws” pertaining to any sale, marketing, prescribing or dispensing of prescription drugs include the laws and regulations of any jurisdictions (country, state, province, prefecture, et cetera) of a Web site’s intended customers (where the Web site offers to ship drugs to), not merely the laws and regulations where the Web site operator resides, the drugs are shipped from, or where the domain name Registrar is located."

(emphasis in original)

So in other words, it's now on domain registrars to investigate and action reports of illegal activity anywhere in the world. I can't wait to start waving my global supercop badge around at parties.
#2 Registrars must take down any website the NAPB directs them to and may not require a court order to do so

"Upon receipt of an abuse notification, some Registrars claim that a court order is required or that they are not violating the laws of the Registrar’s country. Both assertions are wrong."

Yes, we're "one of those registrars", as we've just demonstrated through that whole London Police IPCU takedown thing. It is just mind-boggling how all these groups are coming out of the woodwork and making a straight faced assertions that the law doesn't matter, only what we tell you to do matters.
#3 Registrars must not allow domains taken down at the behest of NAPB to transfer-out to another registrar:

You should not allow domain names engaged in the illegal sale or distribution to transfer to another Registrar: the question of legality does not relate to where the Registrar is located, but rather to the activity of the Web site.

This is absolutely and utterly wrong as was demonstrated by the National Arbitration Forum decision handed down yesterday. We'll repeat the key findings here:

"To permit a registrar of record to withhold the transfer of a domain based on the suspicion of a law enforcement agency, without the
intervention of a judicial body, opens the possibility for abuse by agencies far less reputable than the City of London Police. Presumably, the provision in the Transfer Policy requiring a court order is based on the reasonable assumption that the intervention of a court and judicial decree ensures that the restriction on the transfer of a domain name has some basis of “due process” associated with it."

NABP then claims that because the sites they go after are (ostensibly) fraudulent, it can be prevented from transferring away under the TDRP:

Prohibiting transfer is consistent with ICANN’s Inter-Registrar Domain Name Transfer policy, which permits “fraud” as a basis for denying transfer.

Which was also specifically addressed in yesterday's ruling and determined to be absolutely and totally wrong:

"the reference to “evidence of fraud” in the Transfer Policy does not refer to fraudulent conduct by the holder of the domain name, but evidence of fraud with respect to the transfer of that domain name. See GNSO Issues Report, Inter-Registrar Transfer Policy Part B at 14-15 (May 15, 2009)."

And finally:
#4 There is an appeal process to this, but you will lose.

If you or the registrant believe that they should be entitled to transfer the domain name, or simply wish to challenge the suspension, LegitScript, with NABP’s support, maintains an appeals process for rogue Internet pharmacy domain names. More information is available by contacting abuse.team@legitscript.com.

Note, however, that due to the high level of accuracy involved in the abuse notification process, there has never been a successful appeal, even past Stage 1.

This is the second instance of non-governmental or quasi-governmental agencies reaching into the language in the 2013 ICANN RAA and trying to use it to compel registrars to takedown and seize domains without due process.
We have never received a takedown request from LegitScript, I don't know if NABP has sent this letter to all Registrars or maybe just the ones who are in the habit of asking troublesome questions (i.e. "please show us the legal finding that makes X illegal").
I've replied back to them outlining my concerns and I've also reached out to our ICANN liaison for some guidance on the language in the 2013 RAA, particularly Sections 3.18.1 and 3.18.2 (the parts that turn us all into global supercops).

http://blog.easydns.org/2014/01/10/nabp-to-registrars-you-must-takedown-and-seize-any-domain-we-tell-you-to/

Legitscript /John Horton is causing so much hardship to very poor Americans now that they can't buy their affordable medicines overseas especially Canada. This bogus entity will cause the DEATHS of poor Americans.

The Wrong Way To Stop Fake Drugs

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/23/opinion/the-wrong-way-to-stop-fake-drugs.html

IN 2007-8, when counterfeit versions of heparin, a blood-thinning drug, were shipped from China to the United States market, 149 people died. In the last few months, bogus versions of the cancer drug Avastin, apparently shipped from the Middle East, have surfaced in clinics in California, Illinois and Texas. Thankfully, so far as we know, they haven’t killed anyone, but more and more cases of dangerous fake drugs are being reported by the Food and Drug Administration. Numerous incidents surely go unreported, the evidence swallowed, the deaths incorrectly attributed to natural causes.
Fighting the fake-drug menace is like playing whack-a-mole. It is technically illegal for individuals to order drugs online from other countries. And yet no sooner does the F.D.A. shut down one dubious online pharmacy than another pops up. According to the National Association of Boards of Pharmacy, only 3 percent of the 9, 600 online pharmacies it has reviewed complied with industry standards. Many were based overseas, so their sales to Americans were illegal; others did not require doctors’ prescriptions. And some were very likely peddling dangerous counterfeit drugs.
And yet, the answer is not to outlaw this business entirely. Foreign versions of drugs can cost roughly half what they do in the United States. For the millions of Americans who are uninsured or underinsured, buying from international, credentialed online pharmacies could provide access to the medicines they need at a price they can afford. The online market for drugs is already substantial, with probably more than a million Americans regularly participating. But it is growing slowly because of concern about drug safety and, of course, legality. While the F.D.A. does not prosecute individual consumers whose purchases present no threat to themselves or the public and grants some waivers to those buying less than three months’ supply of a drug from abroad, most are still technically considered criminals.
The logic behind the current law is that it protects Americans from buying dangerous drugs. But there are better ways to guarantee that. In a recent National Bureau of Economic Research paper, I assessed the quality and price of drugs procured through Internet pharmacies. As expected, I found several foreign sites that sold fake drugs. But of the international Web pharmacies certified by the Canadian International Pharmacy Association or PharmacyChecker.com — 23 in all, with 211 drugs sampled — all passed quality-control tests. After all, they were the same drugs made by the same companies, just in different locations.
Careless buyers play Russian roulette, but those who look for credentialed sites can purchase safe drugs at a significant discount. Some Americans know this, but far more should. And it should be made entirely legal for them to do so.
Buying drugs online from overseas isn’t for everyone. It should remain a limited option for desperate cash buyers — sick people with limited resources and insurance coverage — not a way for well-insured patients to reduce their co-pay. American health insurance companies should not be required to reimburse consumers for these drugs, because that would effectively import foreign governments’ price controls into the United States and undermine American companies’ research and development budgets.
Nonetheless, American pharmacists will most likely lose some business, and they will lobby hard against such a change. And no doubt some bad drugs will slip through, which will probably stop the F.D.A. from backing the idea. But as the problems with heparin and Avastin show, fake drugs leak into the United States already. The Internet is not the problem; the problem is that United States law cannot reach many of the criminals who perpetrate the frauds because most never set foot in America.
We can do something about that. These criminal networks flourish across Southeast Asia, Latin America and the Middle East. Turkey and the Caribbean act as major transit points, and countries like Panama launder the billions in profit. A global treaty against fake drugs (and the financing to enforce it) could work to eliminate these safe havens and ensure that the perpetrators of fraud have nowhere to hide. We have treaties against fake currency and the narcotics trade, but as the medical journal The Lancet recently noted, we do not have one for fake drugs. Developing such a treaty — the World Health Organization is the obvious place to start — will take time, but it is the only way to begin to stamp out the international fake drug trade.
In the meantime, poor Americans should know how to buy their medicines online safely and should be allowed to do so. In an attempt to protect poor, uninsured and underinsured Americans from unsafe drugs, we are making sure that some go without drugs completely. It is time the law was changed.

LegitScript – Not So Legit?

On March 3, 2010, in Online Pharmacy Verification Services, by Tod Cooperman, MD, President, PharmacyChecker.com, and Gabriel Levitt, Vice President, PharmacyChecker.com

A firm called Legit Script (LegitScript.com) claims to be protecting people by labeling legitimate Canadian and other non-U.S. pharmacies as “Unapproved” or “Rogue.” This serves the big pharmaceutical interests but not the American consumer. More than that, its founder, John Horton, appears to have exploited his former government position to establish LegitScript.com for his own gain.

[UPDATE 9/16/2010: See “Call for Investigation of John Horton, President of LegitScript, for Possible Government Ethics Violations”]

The Set Up:

In 2007, John Horton worked in the Bush White House as Deputy Director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP). As Horton’s LinkedIn page (accessed 3/3/2010) states:

“I served as the primary staff person responsible for advising the “Drug Czar” and coordinating federal policy on several issues, including prescription drug-related issues (including Internet pharmacy policy) and several chemical control issues. I authored the Administration’s National Synthetic Drug Control Strategy and co-authored the President’s National Drug Control Strategy in the years from 2002 until 2007.”

Congress had called for a report from ONDCP to propose a “strategy to stop advertisements that provide information about obtaining over the Internet drugs…without the use of a lawful prescription” (Our emphasis). Moreover, Congress’ request was limited in scope to controlled substances. Horton, as the chief staff person on this assignment, apparently switched the focus of the report from preventing access to controlled medicines without prescriptions (with which PharmacyChecker fully agrees) to denying Americans access to any type of medicine, even with a valid prescription, if coming from a Canadian pharmacy. The absurdity of this switch is that reputable licensed Canadian pharmacies require prescriptions and won’t even sell controlled substances to Americans. We believe this switch was encouraged by big pharmaceutical interests, who make less money when drugs are purchased at lower cost outside the U.S. To achieve their purpose, the report took aim at search engines as well as PharmacyChecker.com. The ONDCP’s paper stated:

“Both Google and Yahoo use a third-party system called PharmacyChecker.com (located at www.PharmacyChecker.com) to verify whether websites seeking to advertise an online pharmacy are legitimate. However, PharmacyChecker has approved several websites from Canada that may be operating lawfully in Canada, but offer prescription drugs to United States consumers…”

The paper noted that “not all VIPPS pharmacies appear to be recognized in the PharmacyChecker system.” [VIPPS is the verification program of the National Boards of Pharmacy in the U.S. and excludes Canadian pharmacies from membership.] The paper goes onto to draw the baseless conclusion that, “For all these reasons, PharmacyChecker is not an adequate, reliable verification system…”

Approving safe, lawful Canadian pharmacies which require prescriptions certainly does not make PharmacyChecker.com “inadequate” or “unreliable.” Quite the contrary. Nevertheless, the paper lays out the plan that we believe Horton hatched, promoted and attempted to execute for the past three years:

“The DEA, Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and/or ONDCP will meet with the major Internet advertising services (Google, Yahoo and others) to encourage voluntary action such that only online pharmacies in compliance with Federal and State laws are advertised through the major Internet advertising services. Search engines will be requested to voluntarily adopt standards that comply and encourage consumer compliance with Federal and State laws and regulations, and Boards of Pharmacy standards. This will be done in consultation with the State Boards of Pharmacy through the NABP.”

As we see it, Horton was setting the stage for his company, LegitScript.com, to use this “U.S. only” standard to displace PharmacyChecker.com as the leading certifier of online pharmacies and to pressure the search engines into blocking advertising of lower cost pharmacies in Canada and elsewhere. While Horton was a government employee, on March 20, 2007 his company’s domain name legitscript.com was registered: http://www.networksolutions.com/whois-search/legitscript.com. On April 16, 2007, Horton’s government office submitted the paper quoted above to Congress and, having planted the seed, Horton immediately left office and registered LegitScript as a for-profit company in Virginia and, later, as a not-for-profit entity in his home state of Oregon.

This chronology indicates, at least to us, that Horton manipulated and exploited his position as Deputy Director of a White House office for his personal gain. This raises a question in our view of whether his conduct violated The US Office of Government Ethics’ Misuse of Position policy which states that “Executive branch employees must not use their public office for their own or another’s private gain.”

Misleading Reports:

Horton apparently approached the search engines and others to promote the use of LegitScript and/or VIPPS in place of PharmacyChecker.com (and it’s not surprising that VIPPS now endorses LegitScript as a reputable verification service). Perhaps rebuffed by these companies, Horton issued two reports, each focused on a different search engine, and each claiming that over 80% of pharmacy advertisers found were “illegal” or “rogue” when, in fact, most of these were licensed foreign pharmacies selling real medicine and requiring prescriptions.

From his trumped up research, Horton went on to make the outrageous accusation that search engines were “sponsors” of rogue Internet pharmacies tied to “foreign (mainly Russian, Eastern Europe, and Chinese) organized criminal networks that are thought to fund other illicit activities including, in some cases, terrorism.” There is little doubt that LegitScript.com’s intention was to embarrass the search engines and cast doubt on the PharmacyChecker.com Verification Program.

Horton’s Real Business:

Despite LegitScript’s efforts, traffic to its site has been scant — less than 900 unique visitors per month in January 2010, compared to 104, 000 per month to PharmacyChecker.com (http://siteanalytics.compete.com/legitscript.com/). However, as we see it, Horton’s purpose was not to help consumers find safe and affordable pharmacies, but to help deny Americans, especially the uninsured, access to lower priced medications. He has revealed his purpose in several ways: He dissolved LegitScript as a non-profit organization in Oregon on April 8th, 2009 and then registered LegitScript as a for-profit LLC on August 17th, 2009. At the same time, records at the Oregon Secretary of State Corporation Division show that Horton registered a firm called Evergreen Government Relations, giving the same address as LegitScript, apparently expecting to cash in on his government connections and influence on the behalf of corporate clients.* A week earlier, on August 10th 2009, he abandoned his registration at the U.S. Trademark Office to use “LegitScript Certified” as a certification mark for Internet pharmacies. Working for companies to get government agencies to pressure search engines and domain registers is where the action is for John Horton.

Making Money:

LegitScript.com adamantly denies that it is a “front for big PhRMA” and claims that it is funded by its employees. But unlike pharmacy verification groups like VIPPS and PharmacyChecker.com, it does not charge pharmacies a fee for its verification service. So where does its revenue come from, or where does Horton get the money to fund it? The website says it offers “market research reports” regarding the Internet pharmacy and online pharmaceuticals markets. And who might be the customers of such “research”? We think it’s fair to assume that its big pharma, including big US pharmacies. LegitScript.com may not expect to make money from its verification program, and it doesn’t care because its money may come from elsewhere.

Be On the Look Out:

If LegitScript.com releases other “research reports, ” keep in mind John Horton’s real agenda. And if search engines exclude safe, low cost pharmacies from advertising (and one recently did) or, worse yet, block them from appearing at all, we believe that LegitScript.com and John Horton, serving his masters, may have had a hand in it.

We at PharmacyChecker.com think that shutting down “rogue pharmacies” that sell narcotics, or any drug, without a prescription is right. LegitScript’s efforts in that direction are commendable. But shutting down access by Americans to safe and affordable prescription medication is bad policy, unethical and unfair; and using government position and influence to get this done seems a misuse of power. These appear, however, to be the tactics of LegitScript.

Legit? We think not.

http://pharmacycheckerblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/Request-for-Investigation-of-John-Horton-for-Possible-Legal-and-Ethics-Violations-While-Associate-Deputy-Director-of-the-White-House-Office-of-National-Drug-Control-UPLOAD.pdf

It is important that you understand the differences among the groups that rate and verify online pharmacies. It’s not only essential to know what credentials each verifies, but the mission and focus of each group. To help, we put together the comparison table below, focusing on topics that should be of interest to the 120, 000, 000 Americans who struggle to afford their prescription drug bill and are searching online for savings (see Drug Prices SOS for more on this national emergency).

Perhaps the biggest difference that you’ll notice among the groups is that PharmacyChecker.com is the only one to include pharmacies from the U.S. as well as from Canada and select other countries. The Canadian International Pharmacy Association (CIPA) only accepts Canadian-based pharmacies. The Verified Internet Pharmacy Practice Sites (VIPPS) program, run by the National Association of Boards of Pharmacy (NABP), and LegitScript, a private verification service, exclude affordable Canadian pharmacies and others outside the US and exclusively approve U.S. pharmacies.

It is understandable that CIPA does not include U.S. pharmacies, as it is a trade association for Canadian international pharmacies. While its members provide safe and affordable medication to Americans, CIPA is not an independent third party like PharmacyChecker.com. Recognizing this, almost all of its members are also members of the PharmacyChecker.com Verification Program.

But why do NABP and LegitScript exclude non-U.S. pharmacies? Both claim it is because Americans are not legally permitted to purchase lower cost medication from Canada and elsewhere and it’s not safe. But it’s well known that Americans who personally import medication generally do so without government interference and the evidence shows that buying prescription drugs from sites approved by PharmacyChecker.com is safe. The bottom line is that the constituents of NABP and LegitScript.com don’t want you buying lower cost medication because it’s bad for their businesses. NABP is run by U.S. pharmacists and funded by U.S. pharmacies and pharmaceutical companies. Similarly, LegitScript.com appears to serve the interests of pharmaceutical company clients.

Even if you are shopping for a good pharmacy within the U.S., the NABP VIPPS program currently has less than 20 approved members and only seven will sell you medication without having to be a member of their pharmacy plan. These few companies are almost exclusively large chains that offer no price advantage over your local pharmacy and no price advantage over foreign pharmacies on brand name drugs. Nearly ten times as many U.S. pharmacies are approved by PharmacyChecker.com. While LegitScript.com has 344 approved members, most of these are neighborhood pharmacies with websites; they are not mail-order pharmacies that can fill new prescriptions and help you save money on brand name drugs.

After reviewing the facts, we think that you’ll find that PharmacyChecker.com is not only the most independent and objective group, but its verification process is also the most intensive, involving quarterly re-checks of pharmacy licenses while others perform this every one to three years, or don’t specify the frequency. It is no wonder that among all the groups, the public turns to PharmacyChecker.com’s website for information more than twice as often as all of the other programs combined.