As is true for so much illegal activity anywhere in the world, the fact that huge profits can be made by manufacturing and/or moving counterfeit and adulterated drugs is the reason it is a growing problem in the United States.
For drugs that are manufactured in this country, the route to the patient is circuitous. They may be stolen from a warehouse, or purchased at almost no cost from a patient who has been given that drug for free, or who used only a co-pay to obtain it. Or they may be manufactured by a bogus company that created a look-alike to a real drug with no real drug ingredients.
They then get relabeled or diluted or adulterated in some way before being sold to a distributor who sells to another distributor who sells to another one. Eventually they will get sold to a pharmacy.
From the largest drug stores and big-box chains with in-store pharmacies, to mail-order prescription distributors, to neighborhood pharmacies located on small-town street corners, all companies are in business to make money. If pharmacies can purchase the drugs they will resell from one distributor at a lower cost than from another distributor, that is what they will do. It's good business.
The big problem is that even if those drugs are purchased from a well-known, solid and reputable distribution company, it doesn't mean those drugs are real. They may have been altered or counterfeited in some way before they were obtained by those companies.
Dangerous Doses, by Katherine Eban, outlines a number of ways these bogus drugs make their way into the supply of real drugs.
The bottom line is that those distribution companies want to make a profit, too. And too often, their buyers, or the government organizations that should oversee these transfers from one shell corporation to the next, have even been known to just ignore the obvious criminal activity taking place.
READ MORE:
- Counterfeit Drugs: From Organized Crime to Neighborhood Pharmacies
- How Do Drug Counterfeiters Make Their Money?
- How Do Counterfeit Drugs Make Their Way Into the Legal Drug Supply?
- What is Being Done to Stop Counterfeit Drugs?
- How Can Patients Protect Themselves From Counterfeit Drugs?
