Drugs Being Sold Under The Table, Not Over-The-Counter
One of the more interesting and bizarre crimes in recent memory occurred last month when several apparently professional thieves broke into the Eli Lilly warehouse (by cutting a hole in the ceiling!) and stole millions worth of prescription drugs (mostly antidepressants.) Since the most chemically imbalanced person in the world wouldn’t need this much Prozac, officials suspect that a sizable portion of the stolen stock will end up on the black market.
The New York Times reports that while some percentage of these pills will likely be sold for recreational use, there is evidence to suggest that the Eli Lilly drugs are currently being repackaged (cut, in some cases, with other drugs, or reduced in dosage) and resold in legitimate venues, usually without the knowledge of the pharmacy. While the warehouse theft was the first such incident to make big news in recent memory, the process of illegally re-marketing stolen drugs has been going on for years. These cases are often only discovered when patients report having had strange reactions to drugs they’ve been on for months, and further investigation identifies some additional chemical in the pills, or that they haven’t been stored in the proper conditions, which can alter composition and effects.
holdups and breakins aren’t the only way for counterfeiters to get their hands on prescription medication. According to the Times piece: “As soon as medicines leave manufacturers’ loading docks, they enter a market teeming with middlemen, many legitimate but some not. The drugs may move through a dozen hands, through small secondary wholesalers and repackagers. With so many middlemen involved, thieves can easily unload stolen drugs, which may be resold to pharmacies and hospitals and dispensed to you and me.” Here’s the point, this is apparently a serious issue, so what steps have drug makers like Eli Lilly taken to prevent patients from being exposed to contaminated products?
Well, there is actually a way to identify contaminated products and help lawmakers track down the black marketeers. For cents per unit, manufacturers, can print a unique track-and-trace code on each bottle. Of course, that would require big pharma to shell out more cash, and what good is protecting the safety of millions of patients if it’s going to cost extra? Considering most drug companies are making so little off their product that the industry should be considered a massive vehicle for charity, doesn’t it seem a little unfair to ask them to paste tiny labels on their bottles that would potentially save lives and help take down a growing trend of drug theft and counterfeiting?*
*no, it doesn’t.
Michael B. Sauter