The Problem of Online Medicine Purchasing
Online shopping has existed since the late 1990s and has subsequently become ubiquitous (Pew 2008). It is possible to purchase anything from the Web,1 including controlled and regulated medicine and drugs . Concerns about online medicine purchasing were initially raised, following revelations that prescription medicines were available to purchase without any doctor patient interaction (Bloom and Iannacone 1999; Henney et al. 1999), followed by worries about counterfeit medicines in the online pharmaceutical trade (Bessell et al. 2002). Legislation that pre-dates the Web exists to protect patients from harm resulting from unsafe medicines and from illicit medicine and pharmacy practices. However, the sale of medicines online makes it easy to bypass these risk-management systems.
There are specific risks associated with buying medicine online, involving the quality of the medicine, bypassing regulations , and the risk of harm . In addition there are concerns about fraud and theft associated with online consumerism . On the one hand, the Web offers a range of benefits to consumers (for example ease and accessibility of products, lower prices, greater choice ) yet on the other it is a site of risk and harm . The risks of online medicine purchasing have received some attention in the media , policy and research, but this book sets out to examine this issue from the perspective of the online medicine purchasers and understand how they perceive and manage their behaviour in spite of the purported dangers.
Before the Web there were limited options to purchase medicine2 but now choice has been extended beyond that of a doctor or pharmacy , as it is possible to go online to obtain medicines.3 Amongst the plethora of items available to buy online, medicine is just another commodity , but purchasing it has been problematised; it is portrayed as a risky thing to do. This is because legal medicines that would normally be prescribed by a registered practitioner can be bought, along with drugs that would be categorised as illegal if bought on the street, in person, in the offline world. While the procurement and consumption of pharmaceuticals and illicit drugs has always been an issue of authoritative concern and control , the Web as a ânewâ digital means of obtaining medicines has increasingly become subject to attention by regulators and law enforcement because it offers opportunities to purchase illicit medicines as well as drugs , and challenge traditional professional healthcare paternalism . In providing unrestricted accessibility to medicine purchasing, the Web has democratised consumerism , and in doing so allows more people than ever before to engage in illegal and âdeviantâ activities. At the same time, as the Web provides a space for this deviancy, it also provides a space for people to manage and justify how their actions are perceived. Whereas troublesome adolescents (Pearson 1983) and the âunderclassâ (Murray 1990) had few ways to combat the deviant label, purchasers of medicine â legal and illicit â can use the Web as a place to justify and manage their behaviours and deflect such labelling .
Criminological theory explains that the labelling of certain behaviours can have an effect on both the individuals concerned and wider society (Becker 1963). Actions perceived as risky are not necessarily risky in themselves or even considered risky by those doing them, but are often labelled as such. The ways people frame their behaviours as risky or nonârisky impacts on how they present themselves to others (Beck 1992; Giddens 1990). This book explores how people manage their behaviour and present themselves differently when discussing their online medicine purchasing, because external agents have socially constructed the purchasing as a risky behaviour . There has been a cultural labelling of such purchasing behaviour , purchasers shape and negotiate their behaviour (and presentation of self ) in light of that labelling .
Current knowledge is scarce about illicit online medicine purchasing, although stellar work has been conducted by Hall and Antonopoulos (2016) investigating counterfeit pharmaceuticals and the transnational market online, and scholars have turned their attentions to dark net cryptomarkets , most notably Aldridge and DĂ©cary-HĂ©tu (2014, 2016), Barratt (2012) and Martin (2014). This book addresses a gap, as it is the first in depth, empirically grounded and theoretically informed social science analysis of illicit online medicine purchasing from the perspective of the consumer . This is a unique interdisciplinary exploration of a contemporary phenomenon â online medicine purchasing. It provides a criminological understanding of the sale of online medicines rather than just illegal drugs , connecting research on illicit online drug markets with cybercrime , digital culture , consumer studies and medical sociology .
Cybercrime has become largely synonymous with organised crime and high stakes criminal activity. Current cybercrime research is saturated with Rational Choice theorising in which online offending is reduced to issues of simple economics and mere responses to opportunity . Consequently much less attention has been afforded to the everyday online activities construed as deviant , problematic and risky. Online behaviour is often associated with exposure to risk , constituting new vulnerabilities but also new ways of connecting people, yet it centres on identity as much as around economy . This is an es...