It’s Thanksgiving, a perfect time to give thanks and reflect on the positive things that have happened over the past year. In our efforts to combat rogue online pharmacies and educate consumers, below are the things that we at CSIP are most thankful for this year:

• We participated in Operation Pangea with the FDA and law enforcement bodies and took action against more than 9,600 illegal pharmacy websites and seized approximately $41 million worth of pharmaceuticals worldwide.
• We supported consumer education campaigns for the Food and Drug Administration (FDA)’s BeSafeRX and the The Partnership at Drugfree.org’s Medicine Abuse Project , which yielded a total of 41,265,758 social media impressions.
  
• According to LegitScript, the number of illegal drug and pharmacy ads on major search engines like Google and Bing has declined by more than 99.9% percent since 2010. These ads have virtually been eliminated.
• Google alone has removed more than 3 million ads for illegal pharmacies and has made thousands of referrals to law enforcement about rogue online pharmacies since 2011.
• Our payment services members are working cooperatively with law enforcement officials and both have robust monitoring programs that routinely search the Internet for sites purporting to accept payment by branded cards in exchange for illegal prescription drugs.
• Our members, Google and Microsoft,  implemented comprehensive pharma-related advertising policies , including a zero tolerance for illegal, unsafe or deceptive medical or pharmaceutical advertisements. Other companies, including some of the payment networks, are addressing this issue more aggressively as well.
• UPS joined us as a strategic partner and board member. UPS is the first global package delivery organization to be participating on our board and signals a growing number of companies that recognize the power of corporations in keeping the Internet a safe purchasing space.
• We collaborated with the FDA, Interpol, and other government agencies to disband criminal rings and coordinate sting operations to find illegal pharmaceutical networks.
• Our search engine ads are getting double the click through rate of the average search ad, which shows that consumers are really looking for good information and that the public wants to be safe.
• We ran public service announcements, participated in conferences, and engaged audiences on our active Twitter and Facebook page – all of which put the problem of illegal online pharmacies in front of consumers and medical practitioners.
• Track-and-Trace legislation was recently passed and now goes to President Obama for his signature. See our blog post for more details on the related House of Representatives Bill H.R. 1919 and Senate Bills S. 957 and S. 959.
• We were highlighted as a resource on the U.S. Commerce Department-run website STOPfakes.gov, an initiative to protect intellectual property rights in the global marketplace.

CSIP and its member companies are grateful for the collaboration and hard work of our members, partners and law enforcement, and are excited about the positive developments in the fight against illicit online pharmacies this year and you can read even more about our activities this past year on our blog. We will continue our efforts in the future by educating consumers on how to identify fake online pharmacies and partnering with law enforcement and other entities to take action.

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The Center for Safe Internet Pharmacies (CSIP) and our 13 member companies have the shared goal of helping address the growing problem of consumer access to illegitimate pharmaceutical products on the Internet. Continue to read this blog for updates on CSIP’s education, enforcement and information-sharing efforts.