Given the fact that web sites do not ask Internet users for a prescription to purchase narcotics and stimulants, everybody can procure some. None of those sites has controls to keep children away from buying them, a report revealed.

The study, entitled “You've Got Drugs! V: Prescription Drug Pushers on the Internet” and released today by the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University, shows the worrying fact that 85% of web sites selling opioids like Vicodin, stimulants like Adderall and depressants such as Xanax and Valium do not require a suitable prescription from a doctor. Many of them even state that prescription is not needed.

"Anyone of any age can obtain dangerous and addictive prescription drugs with the click of a mouse," asserted Joseph A. Califano Jr., chairman and leader of the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse and former U.S. secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare. "This problem is not going away."

The report, the fifth one this year dealing with the same subject, gives details of the advertising and selling of controlled substances on the web sites.

According to a survey carried out in 2005, almost 20 percent of the teenagers have abused prescription drugs at least once. Some of them believe prescription drugs, especially painkillers, are easier to acquire than illegal drugs such as cocaine or crack.

Underage children gain access to online drugstores by typing in an unreal age. However, a supervised 13-year-old requested and received Ritalin, which is a stimulant, after entering her real age on the website.