According to CASA (short for Columbia University's National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse) the number of drug selling sites is declining. If last year the number of sites that offered to sell drugs was of 581, this year it has dropped to 365. According to the Commtouch Q2 report, the favorite topic amongst spammers regards pharmaceutical products. Out of all the spam detected by the US security company, more than 40% was related to drugs.

For the last four years CASA has been keeping a close eye on the web and web pages that offer to sell you all sorts of drugs. This is because it is easier to get controlled or prescription drugs online from such sites, rather than going about it the traditional way. This is the first year when the number of such sites has gone down, but ironically enough, the offer is still at high levels.

"This decline in the number of sites advertising or selling controlled prescription drugs may reflect efforts of federal and state agencies and financial institutions to crack down on Internet drug trafficking," comments Joseph A. Califano as cited by vnunet.

Commtouch, a US based company that provides e-mail security solutions, states in its quarterly report that drug related spam is on the rise. Spammers are always keen to find prolific ways of propagating their messages, and the pharmaceutical industry is popular enough to get the job done.

The study revealed that pharmacy related spam is 24% more popular than sexual enhancement related spam and in Q2 the first rose to 46% while the latter dropped from 70% to 22%.

In order to get the spam message around the filters, spammers resorted to ingenious methods: they pasted legitimate disclaimers into their spam messages. "The catch is that the body of the message also contains a link to a hosted image of a pharmaceutical ad," says Commtouch.