FedEx Flying the friendly sky!

DOJ Patrolling the Skies: What’s inside your package?

Photo Courtesy of Google Image.

Ok, I get the fact we have Air Marshall’s making sure we arrive to our destination by air in a safe manner. Who is enforcing private companies shipping such as UPS and Fedex? Looks like the Department of Justice is. In recent days, the Justice Department has brought a lawsuit against Fedex for conspiracy to distribute controlled substances for its alleged role in transporting painkillers and other prescription drugs that had been sold illegally.

What is the issue? Internet pharmacies have now added to the workload of homeland security practitioners. Federal, State and Local law enforcements across the nation have joined forces to combat an innovative strategy used by online pharmacies. Consumers are turning to online pharmacies because of the convenience and privacy of purchasing medicines there, and as insurance companies encourage home delivery for long-term medications, according to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration website. These consumers are also virtuallly unknown, with little backgroud verifications done. With mail parcels being sent to home addresses, this has opened up a window of opportunity for some non-compliant, greedy online pharmacies. These pharmacies will simply take online orders for oxycodone, vicadine and other narcotic drugs and ship them to whatever address they are told to address it to. This issue goes back several years according to a recent indictment;

As early as 2004, FEDEX couriers and customer service agents in Kentucky, Tennessee, and Virginia expressed safety concerns to their management, including the following: FEDEX trucks had been stopped on the road by Internet pharmacy customers demanding packages of pills; delivery addresses included parking lots, schools, and vacant homes where people would wait for deliveries of drugs; customers would jump on FEDEX trucks and demand Internet pharmacy packages; FEDEX drivers were threatened if they insisted on delivering a package to the address instead of giving the package to the customer who demanded it; and customers would use multiple names and identification documents to pick up packages of drugs.

In an effort to address the online pharmacy problem, the United Parcel Service (UPS), another parcel delivery service agreed to a settlement in March, 2013 with DOJ. UPS agreed to forfeit $40 million to the US government for shipping drugs from illegal internet pharmacies. They also agreed to make an effort to curtail it’s involvement with illigal pharmacies and report them to the DEA if requested for delivery services. Under the U.S. Controlled Substances Act, a shipping or freight company is allowed to possess and transport drugs in the lawful and usual course of its business without registering with drug enforcement authorities. FedEx on the other hand decided not to play ball with DOJ. In turn, The Drug Enforcement Administration and the DOJ decided to go after them for not complying with a request to self-enforce doing business with illegal online pharmacies.

FedEx claims that it would be violating its clients privacy by opening packages to search for illegal substances. FedEx also claims that it is their job to deliver the package, not examine everything inside of it. That would be the role of law enforcement, which has been busy doing exactly just that; Applying for search warrants on these packages and attempting to deliver them in an effort to make arrests. FedEx also claims it has requested from the DOJ a list of online pharmacies to stay away from but they have not been provided with such information. If the DOJ does win this case, it will certainly change privacy concerns when it comes to mail packages. It’s going to create massive incentives for shipping companies to not just open up and look at what’s in your packages, but to also make on-the-fly determinations of whether or not they think it’s legal.

At the end of the day, it is an innovative way for pharmacies to fall inline with the rest of the online businesses and shoppers, this time with transportation companies caught in the middle of online pharmacies peddling narcotics and law enforcement attempting to address yet another problem.