Counterfeit Drugs’ Path Eased by Free Trade Zones

[RedEarth]

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — Along a seemingly endless row of identical gray warehouses, a lone guard stands watch over a shuttered storage area with a peeling green and yellow sign: Euro Gulf Trading.

Three months ago, when the authorities announced that they had seized a large cache of counterfeit drugs from Euro Gulf’s warehouse deep inside a sprawling free trade zone here, they gave no hint of the raid’s global significance.

But an examination of the case reveals its link to a complex supply chain of fake drugs that ran from China through Hong Kong, the United Arab Emirates, Britain and the Bahamas, ultimately leading to an Internet pharmacy whose American customers believed they were buying medicine from Canada, according to interviews with regulators and drug company investigators in six countries.

The seizure highlights how counterfeit drugs move in a global economy, and why they are so difficult to trace. And it underscores the role played by free trade zones — areas specially designated by a growing number of countries to encourage trade, where tariffs are waived and there is minimal regulatory oversight.

The problem is that counterfeiters use free trade zones to hide — or sanitize — a drug’s provenance, or to make, market or relabel adulterated products, according to anticounterfeiting experts. “Free trade zones allow counterfeiters to evade the laws of the country because often times the regulations are lax in these zones,” said Ilisa Bernstein, director of pharmacy affairs at the United States Food and Drug Administration. “This is where some of the Internet sellers work,” she added

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/17/world/middleeast/17freezone.html

[fenriswolf]

1. hhhmmmmm isnt

didnt haliburton move to the United Arab Emirates ?

[no_hypocrisy]

2. Let me get this straight:

1. We can't buy drugs from Canada for unfounded fears the quality is questionable and the products may in fact be harmful to consumers even the products are exactly the products manufactured by U.S. pharmaceutical corporations and shipped to Canada to be shipped back to this country at a great reduction of price.

but

2. We can IMPORT pharmaceuticals from other countries that have been found in the past to be dangerous and harmful, and no governmental agency will protect the American consumer from them.

[flashl]

3. And, Florida

November 10, 2003
Volume 81, Number 45|CENEAR 81 45 pp. 36-43|ISSN 0009-2347

COUNTERFEIT DRUGS

Sophisticated technologies and old-fashioned fraud pose risks to the prescription drug supply in the U.S.

BETTE HILEMAN, C&EN WASHINGTON

Just a few years ago, Americans could boast with confidence that they had the safest prescription drug supply in the world. Now, they cannot be so sanguine.

...

In the U.S., a vast shadow market of secondary wholesalers has evolved that purchases drugs with few questions asked, providing a ready outlet for criminals who want to introduce counterfeit or adulterated drugs into the supply chain.

This problem manifests itself in a number of ways. Some pharmacies that supply nursing homes and hospices knowingly and fraudulently order at discounted prices far more drugs than they can use, then sell the excess to shady wholesalers at a profit.

...

Tragically, some of the drugs that have been particular targets of counterfeiters are expensive products designed for the sickest patients. Recently, for example, counterfeit Procrit, an antianemia drug, placed at risk patients severely ill with cancer and AIDS, and counterfeit Epogen caused grave medical complications for organ transplant recipients and patients with end-stage kidney disease.

...

a Florida grand jury reported that rampant corruption in the wholesale drug market in that state allows counterfeit drugs to enter the system.

I remember being riveted to my seat watching Hileman on BookTV.