Pharmacist illegally sold Viagra

William Parsons, 60, from Manchester, advertised Viagra and other drugs used to treat erectile dysfunction on his website Potency.co.uk despite being warned that this was illegal.

Parsons, who also ran a pharmacy in the Peak District, was given a suspended nine-month jail term at London's Southwark Crown Court yesterday after previously being convicted of three counts of advertising prescription-only medicine.

Judge Peter Testar said: "This defendant has behaved in a way that he knows was illegal. That's the mischief of what he has done.

"He sought to defend the indefensible."

The court heard Parsons ran the website and the Hayfield Pharmacy in Derbyshire from 1999 until he sold the combined businesses and premises for just under 500,000 in 2007.

Parsons used blank prescriptions obtained from a doctor in Cyprus to prescribe the drugs himself to customers visiting the website.

The site boasted "special offers" on the drugs and claimed the "lowest prices in the UK".

Kennedy Talbot, prosecuting, said he estimated Parsons made more than 1,000 a month from the online business.

An inspector from regulatory body the Medicine and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency visited the pharmacy in 2006 where the blank prescriptions were discovered. He then found the illegal offers on the website.

The inspector subsequently visited the website where he discovered the illegal offers.

Parsons was also ordered to do 150 hours of unpaid community work.