1. You are violating the law.
The Food and Drug Administration, along with U.S. law, prohibits the selling, buying, and shipping of drugs from foreign soil. Most online pharmacies offering to sell medications, especially prescription ones without a proper prescription are based abroad. While it may be allowed in their base of operations, selling and transporting drugs without the right Rx to the United States is punishable by law. You can land in prison and pay a heavy fine just because you cannot be bothered to secure a prescription.
2. You are seriously endangering your health.
Not all online pharmacies are run by people who are after your health care needs. Some are just managed by people who want your money without giving you its real worth. In other words, they are fake and they are probably selling counterfeit drugs. By entrusting and ordering your health care needs to websites that do not require prescription, you are risking purchase and intake of drugs that are not properly handled, stored, and shipped. Most of these counterfeit drugs do not deliver the expected results from authentic medicines because of lower dosages and improper processing. Some can even be fatal due to being out of date or expired.
3. You are risking your personal information.
Keep in mind that when you order anything online, you have to entrust your private information to the online merchant. The same thing goes for online pharmacies. Since these online pharmacies cannot even be bothered to request for a prescription from you (as required by law) or offer remote consultation, they often do not even bother to protect your personal information. Some of the more unscrupulous ones even sell your personal information to other merchants for the purpose of marketing. You may just find your inbox and answering machines flooded by unsolicited messages from different sources.
4. You are putting your finances at risk.
When you buy online, you have to provide the online merchant with your credit card number. Doing so with an online pharmacy that is operating illegally (read: not requiring prescription), is risking your finances. They may charge you with exorbitant fees for medicines that are counterfeit and endanger your health. Alternatively, they may also use your credit card information for other fraudulent activities. The sad part is, you cannot do anything about it. Websites can easily be put up and removed. The fake online pharmacy you dealt with can just change its name and a few of its interface elements and you are at a lost in looking for whom to sue. You might have overlooked it but most websites like this do not provide complete and valid physical addresses and phone numbers.
5. You are setting yourself up for a trap.
In you excitement in finding a site that does not only require a prescription but also promises to deliver miracle cures for your health problems, you might have overlooked a very important detail – its lack of customer support. This means that if you encounter problems with the medicine you ordered, it's up to you to find help. Do not bother going to the site's physical location (it probably doesn't exist), calling its phone numbers (you might just get redirected to a different entity), or sending an email (it's probably fake).
