Twitter-Based Detection of Illegal Online Sale of Prescription Opioid
In February 2001, an 18 year old honors student died after purchasing Vicodin from a “no prescription” online pharmacy. His name was Ryan Haight, and his death led to the passage of the 2008 Ryan Haight Online Pharmacy Consumer Protection Act (RHA; HR 6353), which was specifically designed to respond to the growing use of the Internet to illegally market and sell controlled substances directly to consumers.
However, the rise of social media platforms and the continued promotion of prescription opioid abuse have failed to stop the ubiquitous growth of fake pharmacy websites. In a report by the National Association of Boards of Pharmacy, it was found that of 11,000 pharmacy websites, 96% were not in compliance with state and federal laws.
In this five-month investigation, ACCO experts used a 3-step process involving cloud-based computing, machine learning and web content analyses to identify and characterize illegal online sellers marketing controlled substances on Twitter. They accurately found a total of 1,778 tweets were identified as marketing the sale of controlled substances and 771 tweets were marketing fentanyl.
Authors:
Tim K Mackay
Janani Kalyanam
Takeo Katsuki
Gert Lanckriet