MISSOULA -- Despite recent efforts to regulate Internet pharmacies, the majority of Web sites peddling controlled drugs do not require a prescription. As a result, a vast unregulated online drug bazaar has emerged, according to officials with the Drug Enforcement Administration.

Hordes of pills are diverted by unscrupulous people within the pharmaceutical industry, while doctors are recruited to issue prescriptions. In doing so, they feed a virtual pharmaceutical cottage industry, delivering millions of doses of highly addictive drugs to the shadow market and bypassing the normal checks and balances in the doctor-patient relationship.

"People go to the Internet because they want anonymity and because it's easier to obtain controlled substances that way," said Kevin Merrell, assistant special agent in charge of the DEA's Denver office, which oversees operations in Colorado, Wyoming, Utah and Montana. "It's not as easy to find a rogue doctor and go to his office. But you can be whoever you want to be on the Internet."

In 2006, Merrell said federal authorities conducted more than 90 Internet investigations, arrested 64 individuals, and seized 14 million dosage units of controlled substances and $30.9 million in U.S. currency.

The problem has become so widespread, he said, that investigators have neither the resources nor the know-how to go after individuals ordering narcotics illegally over the Internet.

"Of the 64 people we targeted, they weren't users, but high-level members who set up Web sites and recruit doctors and pharmacists," Merrell said. "We're really targeting the upper echelons. We just don't have the resources to investigate the hundreds of thousands of people buying controlled substances over the Internet."

Jeff, a recovering opiate addict who did not want his full name published because he fears it could cost him his job, said he became hooked on painkillers after a surgery. As he developed a tolerance to the Lortabs a doctor prescribed, he began using more and more until his legitimate prescription couldn't meet his cravings. He turned to the Internet to feed his addiction.

"It's like you're a kid in a candy store, except that instead of candy you can buy narcotic painkillers," he said. "After I quit using, these companies kept calling me and soliciting more business. Finally I just told them I was dead."

Agent Merrell works in the DEA's drug diversion program, and is tasked with investigating the diversion of pharmaceutical controlled substances from licit markets to illicit markets.

In 2003, the DEA created a new task force solely to track the multimillion dollar Internet trade in narcotics, which it characterized as an escalating crisis.

Joseph T. Rannazzisi, head of the Office of Diversion Control the agency that licenses and registers doctors and pharmacies recently gave congressional testimony to explain the enormous spike in illicit pharmaceutical Web sites.

"It's like rabbits. Every day, there are more of them. They're up, they're down, they're foreign, they're domestic. ... We're afraid it's going to overwhelm us," he said.

While estimates vary, the number of Internet pharmacies has risen from zero in the mid-1990s to as many as 1,000 in 2003.

Of the 157 Internet Web sites identified by the Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse, 90 percent do not require any prescription or doctor consultation to purchase prescription drugs. Forty percent requested nothing, while 49 percent only required customers to describe symptoms in an online questionnaire before receiving the drugs, with no physician verification of their symptoms. Only 1.9 percent required prescriptions by mail, and 4.4 percent required faxed prescriptions.

A 2006 DEA investigation revealed that just one rogue Internet pharmacy distributed in excess of 15 million hydrocodone tablets in a single year.

Simply typing "hydrocodone no prescription needed" into a Google keyword search reveals thousands upon thousands of hits.

"The Internet has become one of the fastest-growing methods of diverting controlled pharmaceuticals," Merrell said.

In 2006, the DEA identified 34 known or suspected rogue Internet pharmacies that dispensed 98,566,711 dosage units of hydrocodone-combination products.

To put this in perspective, controlled substances account for 11 percent of prescription sales at legitimate brick-and-mortar pharmacies in the United States, versus 95 percent sold by rogue Internet pharmacies. These 34 pharmacies alone dispensed enough hydrocodone-combination products to supply more than 410,000 actual patients with a one-month supply at the maximum amount recommended per prescription.

The same year, DEA seized more than $29 million in cash and property.

"Basically, we've increased the total amount of our seizures by over 200 percent as a result of these Internet pharmacy cases," Merrell said.

"In order for any physician to give you a prescription, there needs to be a doctor-patient relationship, which means you need to physically see someone. They need to look at your symptoms and your medical history. On the Internet what's happening is you just need to fill out a form. You can even fill out a patient profile that will change your answers so they match up with your drug of choice," Merrell said. "It's really a pretty dirty business when you get down to it, and it is strictly, solely about making money."

Jeff, of Missoula, said he used a prepaid debit card to make his transactions, and within a day or two a brown paper package would appear on his doorstep.

"They don't deal with medical insurance. It's almost strictly a cash business," Merrell says. "If someone gets onto them, they just break down their business and move on.

"For the DEA, there's a newness to this as far as our investigations. It's an emerging problem that we're addressing. The fastest-growing drugs of abuse are controlled substances, which are abused by teens more than cocaine and other stuff. There's a notion that, because these drugs are made by companies licensed by the FDA, people don't have to worry about the same impurities you find in heroin or meth or cocaine. But people are taking so many different tablets, they can get addicted just as easily."

"Also you don't know what you're getting," Merrell said. "They use name brands in ads, but a lot of these companies are from Third World countries."

"You're not getting a better deal off the Internet. Most of these Web sites actually charge you a premium because they can. They know it's not kosher, you know by going there that it's not kosher, and they make a profit off this understanding."