US incompetence
Ignoring the blatant disregard for reality that this article has (correllation != causation et al)
If online phamacuticals were on the increase maybe....just maybe that's because they cost so much in the US.
Some of the Asthma medication I buy in Aus for $5 costs over $100 in US, and with no government health care or subsidies at all can you blame them?
In some states, the US actually falls behind the third world in medical care, kinda sad.
To the some of the above who decided to make it a comment about illicit drugs: Marijuana has an adverse reaction in about %30 of people, I personally know someone who is now permanently sectioned with delusional schizophrenia off it, and that was his first hit (home grown, given to him by his father who smoked), typically it is the other active ingredient/chemical in weed that causes these (CBA or something like that)
If you also look at crime rates where heroin, cocaine and marijuana are tolerated they are far higher than prior to the tolerance. please note that these countries (Denmark in particular) do not count many (sometimes any) crimes as being drug-related. Thus the numbers of drug-related crimes seem to drop.
Oh and I believe Britain actually started banning drugs way before the US, I could be wrong however.