Trafficking in prescription drugs -- many of them bogus -- exceeds the use and sale of illicit drugs in many countries, according to the U.N.'s drug office, and the trend is driven in part by Internet sales, Reuters reported Sept. 5.

In the U.S., sale and abuse of prescription medications is second in scope only to marijuana. Stimulants and painkillers are among the top sellers.

Online, phony pharmacies sell drugs that are often equally fraudulent, sometimes with deadly results. Fake malaria drugs have killed people in Cambodia, while a phony anemia medicine resulted in deaths in Argentina.

"The sophistication of the counterfeiters certainly has increased tremendously," Gisela Wieser-Herbeck of the International Narcotics Control Board. "It's a market where you can make a lot of money." In some countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America, 30 percent of all medicines are estimated to be counterfeits. Many of these are believed to originate in China.

"The Internet provides a perfect channel because there is no national control mechanism, there is no quality assurance and there is nobody who is going to ask where you got the supply," Wieser-Herbeck said.