Melatonin shipping pause shows how parents are buying S4 drugs without a script
Risks around gummies, and overseas products that were far stronger than advertised, prompted iHerb to change tact.
A major company’s four-month pause on melatonin shipments has exposed how Australian parents are unknowingly breaking the law by ordering the S4 medicine online without a prescription.
Australians aged 55 and younger must have a prescription to buy melatonin, but parents have nonetheless been buying it from US websites, where melatonin is OTC and cheap.
But in August, US company iHerb paused imports to Australia “to review order protocols”.
It followed the WA Poisons Information Centre, which also covers SA and the NT, revealing that it had received 322 reports of melatonin overdoses in about six months.
