Libby Baney Discusses the Growth in Online Pharmacy Buying With Healthcare Packaging

In “Increasing Consumer Risk from Growth in Online Pharmacy Buying,” Healthcare Packaging turned to government and regulatory partner Libby Baney, senior advisor to the Alliance for Safe Online Pharmacies (ASOP), for insights on the Drug Supply Chain Security Act (DSCSA) and the trend revealed in the ASOP Foundation 2023 Consumer Survey of more Americans turning to online pharmacies for medication needs every year.

“Congress has long contemplated the internet as part of drug supply chain security,” Baney explained. “I'll say it's not lost on Congress that there's this thing called the internet. It's just very hard [to regulate], and so the focus has been on the traditional brick-and-mortar supply chain for DSCSA purposes.”

Baney noted that ASOP Global and the ASOP Foundation offers data and evidence-based advocacy to policymakers to show there is still a major gap in supply chain security when most Americans have and will continue to buy medicine online.

“Patients want medicine where they get it at a better cost and more convenience, especially if there's an access challenge. ASOP Foundation data shows that, yet the regulations haven't kept paced with these drivers. ASOP’s job is to help policymakers think about the internet as part of the U.S. supply chain now, and that is really complicated jurisdictionally because healthcare regulators don't have control over the internet—really no one entity does,” said Baney.

“We do this work globally, as the supply chain in one country affects other countries because medicine is being shipped and trans-shipped and then sold on the internet. All of that matters to American public safety,” explained Baney. “Not to toot our own horn, but I think this [survey] data says ASOP’s work is more important than ever. The drivers – and attendant risks to patients – are not going away. Putting our heads in the sand from a policy perspective and thinking, ‘We're just going to secure this one last thing in the brick-and-mortar world’… yes, that’s very important, but insufficient given the internet.”