Dr. Al Carter, PharmD is the Executive Director and the CEO of the National Association of Boards of Pharmacy. He joins our host Julie Soukup, VP of The Medical Memory to discuss the imperative importance of educating patients about online and faux pharmacies.

In our podcast, he discusses the importance of nurses educating patients about the concerns of misusing medication or utilizing illegitimate online pharmacies.

He talks about the programs the State Board of Pharmacy is putting in place to track the dispensing of controlled substances, for not only pharmacists but for prescribers. Especially in the Pain Clinic era where some patients go state to state in hopes of 'beating the system.' A Platform that connected all systems to protect patients became imperative.

What was incredibly powerful was his conversation about online Pharmacies. Over 95% of the pharmacies that are online are actually not credible. The concern and fear of this are that these can be pharmacies that are not licensed and not following FDA regulations. Many of the medications are laced or have no active ingredients. For some patients this can be fatal and over 109K patients died last year due to overdose, or taking something and not understanding what's in it.

There are many ways to verify pharmacies, and he gives tips for doing so.