Commerce, HHS, FDA to Fight Online Opioid Sales

The Department of Commerce and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) today revealed a 120-day pilot program to curb illegal online sales of unapproved opioids.

Under the program, the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) will work with three domain name registries, Neustar (.us), Verisign (.com, .net) and Public Interest Registry (.org), to suspend the domain names of websites found to be illegally selling unapproved opioids.

The FDA will serve as a “trusted notifier” to alert the registries about websites that are illegally selling unapproved opioids. Upon receiving notice from the FDA, a registry may then voluntarily lock the domain, delete the domain, or place the domain on hold, as appropriate. The “trusted notifier” designation expedites the process for suspending domain name registrations.