Tennessee pharmacies sell potent ivermectin, led by doctor who's taken 'bucketloads' [View all]

Source: ABC News

June 17, 2026, 5:38 AM


NASHVILLE, Tenn. -- Four years ago, Tennessee became the first state to allow adults to buy the antiparasitic drug ivermectin from a pharmacy without first seeing a doctor. Pharmacies can use a pre-written, blanket prescription to sell to just about anyone who walks through their doors. The drug is now marketed and sold across the state in roadside shops and small-town strip malls with little oversight from health authorities.

Highway billboards advertise ivermectin as "Available Without a Prescription in Tennessee!" while dozens of pharmacies offer highly concentrated pills, sometimes at 10 or 20 times the potency of a standard tablet. Ivermectin is a Nobel Prize-winning, generally safe drug approved by the FDA for treating parasitic diseases in humans, which can generally be done with a single dose of three or four prescription-strength tablets. It is also used as a dewormer for horses and other livestock.

Its popularity surged during the coronavirus pandemic as unorthodox doctors and anti-vaccine activists promoted it as a treatment for COVID-19. Clinical trials have shown that ivermectin is not effective against COVID-19. Nonetheless, it has since become a symbol of resistance against the medical establishment among some conservatives and followers of the Make America Healthy Again movement, championed by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Timothy Caulfield, a professor at the University of Alberta who studies health misinformation, said ivermectin became an "ideological flag" during the COVID-19 pandemic, opening the door for influencers to push the drug for other ailments to a "captured audience" even without proof it works for those conditions. "This is really about profit," Caulfield said in an interview with ABC News, which partnered with KFF Health News to report on ivermectin. "This is about political identity. This is about creating distrust in the existing biomedical community. This is about money."

Read more: https://abcnews.com/US/tennessee-pharmacies-sell-potent-ivermectin-led-doctor-bucketloads/story?id=132977175