Top search engines face drug testing

A major US pharmacy trade group is pressuring web-based search engines to ban advertisements from unlicensed drug dealers, highlighting growing pains for the net's newest marketing powerhouses.

The National Association of Boards of Pharmacy (NABP) said it will meet with Yahoo! on Wednesday as part of an effort to clean up ads for prescription drugs, such as the painkillers Vicodin and OxyContin, that can be ordered freely by mail from some websites without a doctor's consent.

NABP and Drugstore.com, one of the biggest online pharmacies, have contacted several sites, including search engine provider Google, Microsoft's MSN and AOL, saying that they have run ads from illegal distributors.

NABP and Drugstore.com want the sites to agree not to run ads from distributors unless they are certified by the industry organisation. The association currently lists just 14 certified pharmacies on its verified internet pharmacy practices site (VIPPS), including Drugstore.com.

Walter Conner, senior director for communications for Drugstore.com, said: "The concern is that there are literally hundreds of illegal sites selling pharmaceuticals such as OxyContin and Vicodin with no medical oversight. Google is carrying ads for these sites. We feel that the major search engines have a social responsibility not to do this."

Stefanie Olsen writes for News.com