Getting a prescription online in the Netherlands: what is allowed

Article 67a of the medicines act forbids distance selling other than under rules set by ministerial regulation, and those rules sit in article 6.12 of the Regeling Geneesmiddelenwet. Neither contains a limit to non-prescription medicines: the limit is about who may hand the medicine over.

That requirement comes from article 61: prescription medicines may only be dispensed by a pharmacist practising in a pharmacy. The seller must also notify the minister before starting, giving a name, a fixed address, a start date, the website address and the categories offered.

This is why a public list exists. The register kept by the CIBG shows each provider's category, and «UR» means prescription-only. A site absent from that list is not selling lawfully to customers in the Netherlands.

Article 67 of the same act reads: «Het is een ieder verboden via internet geneesmiddelen voor te schrijven aan personen die de voorschrijver nog nooit persoonlijk heeft ontmoet, of die de voorschrijver niet kent of van wie de voorschrijver de medicatiehistorie niet beschikbaar heeft.»

Prescribing over the internet is prohibited where the prescriber has never met the person, does not know them, or does not have their medication history. Delivery is settled, but the prescription itself may not come out of a questionnaire filled in by a stranger.

A service promising a prescription in five minutes with no conversation is promising something in tension with this article. That is a statement about the service, not about you.

The first question is about the seller: is the provider in the CIBG list, and under which category. The second is about the doctor: is the prescriber in the BIG register. A provider can be properly registered while the doctor behind it is not, and the other way round.

The inspectorate states both in two sentences: check on aanbiedersmedicijnen.nl whether the provider has notified the authorities, and check the register of established pharmacists to see whether your provider is a registered pharmacist.

A CIBG registration therefore proves that the selling company notified the state and may sell that category. It proves nothing about the doctor writing the prescription, which is exactly why both are worth looking at.

In countries where delivery is banned, the offer gives itself away: anyone promising to post a prescription medicine is already outside the law. In the Netherlands that signal does not work, because delivery is ordinary here.

The consequence is that a properly registered Dutch shop and a site with no registration at all look the same from the outside, and the difference only becomes visible in the registers.

Two minutes in two registers are worth more here than anywhere else: once on the company name, once on the doctor's name.