How Can Patients Protect Themselves From Counterfeit Drugs?
The counterfeiting and adulterating of legal drugs is not going away anytime soon. From examining the drug and packaging of any of your prescriptions, to writing your congress representatives, there are some steps we patients can take to begin to improve the safety of our drug supply.
The following is a list of steps patients can take to defend against counterfeit drugs. The list is reprinted with permission from Dangerous Doses, by Katherine Eban, and edited with additional information for About.com’s Empowered Patients site.
This advice is offered for both drug prescription drugs obtained through a pharmacy, and over-the-counter (OTC) drugs purchased from any store or through the Internet.
Watch What You Take
- Be familiar with your medicine. If it is a medicine you have taken for awhile, you will know exactly what it should look like. Examine its shape, color and size. If it looks different in any way, or if it tastes different from what you have been used to, return it to the pharmacy immediately, and ask for it to be examined.
If it is a new medicine to you, then research its appearance and description online. If there are discrepancies, or you have questions, ask your pharmacist to examine it while you watch and ask for assurance that the drug is what it should be. - Look for altered or unsealed packaging, or changes in the package design.
- Make sure the packaging is pristine and has no sticky residue, which can indicate the drug was previously dispensed.
Learn more about what you should look for when deterimining if you have counterfeit drugs.
