Better living through fake chemistry – counterfeit pharmaceuticals flook UK

pink pharmaceutical pillsWe’re all fairly accustomed to the idea of counterfeit goods made in the far East being passed off as the real thing in Western countries, but we tend to think of them as being things like designer clothing brands or consumer electronics.

The trouble with those items is that they’re bulky, still moderately expensive to produce, and easily spotted as fakes by someone with a sharp eye… which may explain why the new fakes of choice for criminal cartels shipping to the UK are pharmaceuticals. [image by amayzun]

The drugs in question have been so well cloned that they’ve even found their way into chemists and doctor’s surgeries, and their high price-tags in the UK market ensure there’s a good profit to be made – which suggests the problem will spread to other countries, too. Will the counterfeit drugs market ever eclipse the illegal drugs market?

2 thoughts on “Better living through fake chemistry – counterfeit pharmaceuticals flook UK”

  1. ** I LOVE IT **
    Finally we see the coruptopolies of western medicine wilted down my market forces – simple: if you outprice what’s affordable, the market finds a solution, IP rights nothwithstanding.

    I can only HOPE this will balloon fast and drag down prices.

    I can only HOPE sellout, mafia enabler politicians wont crack down with stormtroopers.

  2. Khannea Suntzu, your comment that you “LOVE” medicine counterfeiting is rather distasteful coming, as it does, shortly after 30+ Nigerian children were killed by a dodgy teething syrup.

    The syrup contained diethylene glycol, which had presumably been mislabeled as “glycerine” at some point in the production chain.

    Anyway, your point is incorrect because many counterfeit medicines are fakes of off-patent drugs. These paracetamol fakes were discovered in Kenya last month.

    If governments didn’t interfere with pharmaceutical markets (through trade barriers, taxes, tariffs, price controls and so on) then open competition between branded generic forms of these drugs would result in low prices and high quality drugs.

    Here are some levels of taxes and tariffs imposed by governments in LDCs on pharmaceutical products:

    Kenya 38%
    Brazil 29%
    Pakistan 26%
    Mexico 25%
    China 24%
    Ghana 22%
    India 20%
    Morocco 18%
    Thailand 18%
    Laos 17%
    Nigeria 16%

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