The wide-ranging statute sets new standards for online pharmacies, including the requirement that a patient has to see a doctor and needs a prescription for a controlled substance, which can range from pain killers to some diet drugs, that would be part of a normal course of treatment. Online pharmacies also will have to register with the Drug Enforcement Administration, just like their brick-and-mortar counterparts, once the law goes into effect in April.
The impact of the new law is already being felt on sites that sell anabolic steroids and human growth hormone.
“Previously, we just left them alone,” says Christine Jones, general counsel for GoDaddy.com, a popular web-hosting company and the world’s largest website domain name registrar. “We didn’t have any laws behind us that allowed us to take them down.”
GoDaddy.com has shut dozens of sites targeted by the new law, Jones says, although some remained functioning as of Thursday afternoon. Jones said GoDaddy.com isn’t able to constantly monitor the 31 million domain names the company has registered or the thousands of websites it hosts, but it acts on tips from law enforcement, everyday web users and organizations that monitor such activity.
Other Internet hosting and registrar companies are moving in the same direction. Aaron Hollobaugh, spokesman for Hosting.com, says “illegal pharmaceutical companies will be added to our extensive list of organizations we deny service to.” Steven Vine, deputy general counsel for Register.com, says he’s still studying the details of the law, but believes it will enable his firm “to further help law enforcement while still providing for the privacy of our customers.”
Federal and state authorities currently have to seek injunctions to get websites pulled, a process that could take months to wind through the courts. Once the new law is in place, state attorneys general or federal law enforcement can just give notice to a web-hosting or registrar company to shutter a rogue pharmacy.
“This is a law that will get implemented quickly,” says DEA spokesman Garrison Courtney. “Most (web-hosting companies) are socially responsible, and they try to do the right thing.”
Websites will still be able to advocate the use of controlled substances and provide pricing information. But once the site crosses into distribution, its operators will be violating the law. A person caught selling controlled substances over the Internet faces up to 10 years in prison — double the previous maximum penalty for unlawful distribution.
Sens. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., and Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., drafted the legislation in response to the death of Ryan Haight, an 18-year-old high school honors student from California who overdosed on Vicodin in 2001. He purchased the painkiller from an online pharmacy without having met with a physician concerning an ailment for which Vicodin might have been a treatment.
DEA officials say they realize the law, which will alter the Controlled Substances Act, won’t be a panacea: Those pushing drugs can have their site hosted outside the USA, putting them out of reach of federal authorities.
“Is this the overall solution? No,” DEA spokesman Courtney says. “But this is definitely a tool. Other countries are working with us. A lot of them recognize that this isn’t just a drug issue, but a health issue as well.”

It’s the diet craze sweeping Britain. But LighterLife’s punishing regime has been linked to memory loss, heart attacks and even death.
Sarah Barker weighed 23 stone when she turned in desperation to the seemingly miraculous diet that would transform her life. She wanted to slim for her daughters’ sake.
The 38-year-old science teacher had tried many diets but, like many dieters, she always piled the weight back on.
But LighterLife – the dieting craze which currently has 15,000 followers in Britain – appeared to be the answer to her dreams.
Thin, but at what cost? Christina Massingham, left and right, shed an incredible 11 stone in eight months – but believes the diet has ruined her life
Following its very low calorie diet, which replaces all meals with nutritionally balanced shakes, her weight plummeted.
In eight months she shed an incredible 11 stone, dropping eight dress sizes from a 30 to a 14, and was thrilled with her new shape – as was her husband, James, a 32-year-old farmer, and children aged 15, five and three, with whom she could now enjoy a more active life.
‘I had bags more energy and started going to the gym,’ says Sarah, who lives in Fadmoor, North Yorkshire, and was on the diet from January to September 2006. ‘It was a completely new me and, at £66 a week, I thought it was money well spent.’
Today, however, Sarah believes the diet has ruined her health, and claims that following such a low calorie intake for so long caused muscle pains, poor vision, memory loss and tiredness.
‘Until I started LighterLife I had never had a medical problem in my life,’ she says. ‘Now I struggle to remember things and I can’t even watch my three daughters playing on the swings because movement brings on blurred vision.’
Yet LighterLife, which is endorsed by  Antony Worrall Thompson and had a turnover last year of £21million, insists its diet plan is safe.
It says the foodpacks, which cost £66 for a week’s worth of shakes, are specially developed to satisfy daily nutritional needs and stresses that clients are medically approved by their doctor before taking part.
Counsellors trained by the company provide weekly therapy sessions to change the way people think about food.
However, a growing number of disenchanted dieters are speaking out, along with alarmed doctors and nutritionists.
They question the company’s approach, which teaches people to abstain from food and survive by consuming just 500 liquid calories a day – a quarter of an adult’s normal recommended intake.
Some healthcare professionals claim the diet is downright dangerous, a form of supervised starvation, leading to potential health problems and even eating disorders as people struggle to come off the regime.
Two years ago, 25-year-old Matilda Callaghan died from heart arrhythmia after spending six months on LighterLife.
The coroner recorded an open verdict, as to what caused the fatal arrhythmic heartbeat, recognising that while – as the company argued – being obese can kill, so too can losing weight quickly.
But leading obesity expert Professor John Garrow was unequivocal: he blamed Matilda’s death on her rapid ten-stone weight loss which, he said, reduced the lean tissue in her heart.
Professor Garrow says: ‘Studies show semi-starvation diets deplete the protein and muscle of internal organs, resulting in an increase of heart arrhythmias among obese people following them.’
Sadly for Sarah, such health warnings are too late. ‘The double vision suddenly became worse. My doctor referred me to a neurologist. I was devastated – I couldn’t stop crying.
‘When I explained the programme to my neurologist he was shocked that it was legal. He explained that anything under 800 calories a day may cause damage to both the peripheral and central nervous system – that is the brain and the spinal cord. I was horrified: I had been on 500 calories a day for nine months.’
LighterLife denies there is any risk. The company claims that ‘the body doesn’t need excess calories, it needs nutrition’ and states that very low calorie diets are well proven and have been used for 30 years.
Professor Iain Broom, Chief Medical Advisor to LighterLife, said: ‘Without the full details of the case I cannot comment specifically, but there is no evidence to suggest any link between very low calorie diets and demyelination in association with longer term use of this approach to obesity management.’
Another side effect, absent from LighterLife literature, is the damage abstaining from food causes to teeth. But dentist Dr Rob Endicott, 34, admits even he was blinded by the lure of losing so much weight, fast.
‘My wife wanted me to try the diet with her, so last spring we both joined,’ he says.
‘We lost two stone in a month but I couldn’t concentrate, which made work impossible. My wife had beautiful teeth but their condition deteriorated.’
It was then that Rob appreciated what was happening. ‘It is clinically proven that not eating food increases cavities and worsens gum disease. I’ve now treated lots of patients on the programme whose dental health diminished.’
Despite Rob informing his Lighter-Life counsellor of the problem a year ago, dental care still isn’t mentioned by the firm. But then, even on its extensive website there is no side effects section.
Yet when one woman dropped out because she felt ill, her counsellor said: ‘That’s just one of the side effects – you’ve got to carry on and get past it.’
Numerous cases have been reported of hair loss, menstrual disorder and – on one occasion – water poisoning when a man drank large amounts to relieve the constipation the liquid diet’s lack of fibre can induce.
Undercover journalists also witnessed counsellors accepting clients with eating disorders – though Bar Hewlett, director of LighterLife, defended this policy, saying: ‘The National Eating Disorders Association sends people to us who are obese.’
The Eating Disorders Association (now called Beat), has denied making any such referrals.
This issue is particularly pertinent given the experience of Christina Massingham – a 19-year-old from Hemel Hempstead who, a year after joining LighterLife, was diagnosed with anorexia.
Having read about LighterLife in a magazine last July, Christina – then weighing 22st – considered the diet a life line.
Christina’s daily diet consisted of three liquid shakes and a LighterLife fruit bar, amounting to 500 calories.
Physically, the diet was a success – in the first week alone, Christina lost a stone.
‘Food was no longer part of my life,’ she says. ‘The general outlook was that food was “bad” and LighterLife shakes were “good”.’
After three months, she had lost more than five stone. But in January she lapsed and ate a meal.
‘I didn’t think it would affect my weight much, but at the next weigh-in I had put on five pounds. The fact I’d put on so much weight after just one meal instilled in me a deep-seated fear of food.’
By May, Christina had reached her goal weight of 10st 8lb and her counsellor advised her to start reintroducing conventional foods.
But Christina was so petrified of putting on weight that, while she cut down on the sachets as directed, she didn’t eat any food and lost more weight.
Realising Christina was obsessed with her weight, her mother stopped paying LighterLife.
‘Without the shakes, I panicked,’ says Christina. ‘I had been living on liquid for so long I had no idea how to eat healthily.’
Christina devised a diet based on 500 calories and began exercising excessively. She became ill frequently and her periods stopped.
In August her mother, desperately worried, had phoned LighterLife for guidance. All that came was a call from a senior representatives reiterating that it was OK to eat food – a promised eating plan never arrived.
Finally Christina, now weighing just 8st 13lb, visited her GP, who diagnosed her with anorexia.
‘In September I started counselling with a psychiatrist who says the diet changed my psyche by not allowing me food. I wish now I’d just stuck to a healthy diet. I may have lost 13st, but it’s not worth the psychological damage it has caused me.’
While the network of ‘counsellors’ – currently numbering 270 – are trained in counselling and physiology by LighterLife, they are by no means medical experts.
In fact, the company’s three founders had no medical or healthcare background – two of them met while overweight research subjects for a low calorie diet.
The vociferous director Bar Hewlett has cultivated a public profile and describes herself as an ‘accomplished industry speaker’ and ‘expert on all topics surrounding obesity’, yet before establishing LighterLife she had no relevant experience.
But LighterLife, meanwhile, continues to flourish. Of course, obesity is a momentous problem in modern life – in Britain a staggering 24 per cent of adults are clinically obese.
Any solution would and should be welcomed. But the emotiveness and enormity of the issue makes it all the more important that people are aware of any risks weight-management programmes involve.
Obesity is no doubt dangerous, but so are some of its apparent solutions.

Mass. says new pot law allows other THC drugs, too
BOSTON (AP) — Guidelines for a new Massachusetts law that ends minor marijuana arrests say the law may also apply to other drugs with the same psychoactive ingredient, such as hashish.
The guidelines obtained Monday by The Associated Press say the law that takes effect Friday ends criminal penalties for possession of an ounce or less of THC — the primary psychoactive ingredient in marijuana, hashish or hash oil.
Voters passed a referendum in November that instead imposes a civil penalty of a $100 fine and forfeiture of the drug.
The guidelines from the state Executive Office of Public Safety and Security advise law enforcement agencies on the law’s practical enforcement, but courts eventually are expected to have to settle questions on its scope.
The guidelines make clear that the law doesn’t change existing regulations against drug distribution or driving under the influence, for example. In addition, all law enforcement officers with civil powers — including campus officers — have the authority to issue tickets.
The guidelines also recommend that cities and towns pass ordinances banning public use of such drugs.