ENUMCLAW, Wash. — Ivermectin, a medication used to treat parasites in horses, has been flying off the shelves at Bill Meiser’s Country Farm & Feed in Enumclaw.
“Our sales have been up for the past couple of months, over three times as much,” Meiser said.
Now Meiser is wondering if he’ll be able to keep up with the demand.
“We’re currently out, we sold the last tube this week. We may or may not get a new supply this week,” he said.
But where’s the demand for ivermectin coming from?
The drug is being falsely touted as a remedy to COVID-19 in some online spaces. Now, some people are trying to get their hands on the horse medication in any way they can, no matter who, or what it’s meant to treat.
“People, or some people at least, are bypassing the human version and then going to stores with livestock supplies and picking up the medicine for animals,” said Dr. Scott Phillips, medical director for the Washington Poison Center. “If people are using veterinary products, they may not be making the right dose adjustments, and that makes for a real risk of toxicity.”
Ingesting too much ivermectin can lead to side effects that range from nausea to seizures. However, that hasn't stopped people from looking for ivermectin vendors.
As a result, the Washington Poison Center says they’ve gotten more people calling over ivermectin poisoning.
“If you compare August 2021 to August 2020, we’ve seen about a threefold increase in the number of cases,” Phillips said.
Meanwhile, farmers in Pierce County worry that they may have to look for alternative treatments for the animals that need the medication.
Meiser says he'll be screening requests before selling the drug from now on to make sure it gets to farmers in need.
“We’re only going to sell it to people we know, or people we know for sure have horses. We’re not going to sell it to any new people. We’re lucky to get any supply at all, and the people that need it, we’re gonna try to make the horse people get it,” he said.