Counterfeit drugs have become a scourge in many parts of the world, and are a threat even in advanced economies such as the U.S. Today, in most parts of the world, counterfeit drugs represent from 10 to 40 percent of all medicines in circulation, making their way even into hospitals and doctors’ offices. It is critical that policy makers around the world begin taking more seriously the threat of counterfeit drugs.
That’s one reason why this week the Institute for Policy Innovation (IPI) jointly sponsored with the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), the Caribbean Community (CARICOM), and the European Union a three-day training conference on counterfeit drugs for police, judges, customs and border officials in the Caribbean region. The conference focused on customs and border detection, prosecuting cases against counterfeiters, working with manufacturers, and necessary legislation.
In almost all cases counterfeiting of medicines is done by large scale criminal enterprises. It’s not a cottage industry for sympathetic people driven by poverty. No, the criminals have solved their poverty problem, but they keep foisting their products of death on unsuspecting populations.
“Products of death”? Yes. Consider these very common examples of counterfeit drugs:
- Counterfeit antibiotics that contain a little, but not enough, of the active ingredient so that the patient develops resistance to the antibiotic while not gaining the benefit of the antibiotic;
- Counterfeit insulin that is little more than water, resulting in diabetic patients seeing their conditions irreversibly worsen;
- Counterfeit adrenaline that found its way into hospitals where children undergoing heart operations were unable to have their hearts restarted because medicine supposed to be adrenalin was actually infected water;
- Counterfeit pills made of nothing but brick dust that won’t even dissolve in the stomach, much less deliver any medical benefit.
It is within this context of counterfeit drugs that policymakers need to place such policy debates as reimportation and Internet sales of prescription drugs. It is vital that the supply chain for pharmaceuticals be as secure as possible. And which is most important: Somewhat lower prices, or the integrity of our drug supply?
Finally, those familiar with the problem of counterfeit drugs will tell you that the vast majority of them are coming from India and China. It’s long past time for those countries to eliminate the production of counterfeit drugs on their shores.