Pharmacist avoids jail for illegally advertising prescription-only Viagra

A Pharmacist from Manchester, who advertised Viagra illegally, has luckily avoided an immediate jail sentence.

Mr William Parsons advertised Viagra and other prescription medication used to treat male impotence on his website Potency.co.uk which has now been removed from the web.

Parsons, who also ran a pharmacy in the Peak District, was given a suspended nine-month jail term at London's Southwark Crown Court on Thursday after previously being convicted of three counts of advertising prescription-only medicine.

Passing sentence, Judge Peter Testar said: "This defendant has behaved in a way that he knows was illegal. That's the mischief of what he has done. He sought to defend the indefensible."

The court heard Parsons ran the website and the Hayfield Pharmacy in Derbyshire from 1999 until he sold the combined businesses and premises for just under £500,000 in 2007.

Parsons used blank prescriptions obtained from a doctor in Cyprus to prescribe the drugs himself to customers visiting the website. The site boasted "special offers" on the drugs. Kennedy Talbot, prosecuting, estimated Parsons made more than £1,000 a month from sales.

An inspector from regulatory body the Medicine and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) visited the pharmacy in 2006 where the blank prescriptions were discovered. The inspector subsequently visited the website where he discovered the illegal offers.

Parsons was warned by the MHRA he would have to change his website in order to comply with the law, but the pharmacist refused.

Judge Testar said: "He carried on with the plainly illegal activity of advertising prescription only drugs. He simply decided he wasn't going to comply with the law. He thought if he carried on he wouldn't be stopped. These are regulations that are there for the protection of the public. The requirement of a prescription is there for a good reason."

The Judge said he had intended to pass an immediate custodial sentence but had decided not to as Parsons was the main provider of care for his sick wife. The nine-month sentence was suspended for two years. Parsons was also ordered to carry out 150 hours unpaid work in the community.