Buying Propecia Online — Is It Really Finasteride?

Hi, I was wondering about these websites online that “prescribe” and sell Propecia for a much-reduced price. Am I guaranteed to get finasteride from these sites? Or are they just big time scams. I just bought my first month’s supply at about $70. The price really worries me, especially since I want to continue finasteride long term.

The key to buying any medication over the internet is to determine if the source (manufacturer) is a known producer of quality drugs and the chain from manufacturer to you is unbroken by folks who can substitute fake drugs into that chain. Now that there is freedom to sell finasteride in the U.S. market in the 5mg dose (the U.S. Patent that restricted this has expired), there are drugs appearing on the market which have FDA clearance. If there is really FDA clearance, then the drug is most probably what the label says it is. There have been, however, reports that a black market in drugs is appearing in the U.S. and even pills purchased by U.S. pharmacies are being substituted with fake drugs that have little or no drug in them. The pharmacies have a responsibility to guarantee the authentic nature of such purchases so when you talk about guarantees, then there is a sort of purchase guarantee covered by the pharmacy’s license to do business in the states where they operate. When you purchase drugs over the internet, there is no way to guarantee the source or the quality and even fake pills that look like the originals pills may not be real. This is a problem not only for drugs like Propecia/finasteride, but for drugs like Viagra which may look like the real thing and are only sugar in reality. This is a growing problem and there seems to be great profits for those without any sense of honor and who chase the almighty dollar. Expensive cancer drugs or AIDS drugs are falling victim to this process as well. As I’ve said before, it is a ‘buyer beware’ business so to help our patients, we purchase Propecia directly from Merck and sell it ‘at cost’ to our patients as a convenience to them.