How Do Counterfeit Drugs Make Their Way Into the Legal Drug Supply?
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.
Read more about how counterfeit drugs make their way into pharmacies.
