Deadly Fake Prescription Drugs

Poison Pills box

As if there weren’t enough problems with drug addiction in America, now fake prescription drugs have begun to flood across the world causing serious problems.

In best case scenarios someone takes a pill that does nothing. The worst-case scenario the pill is not a dud but a strong narcotic such as fentanyl.

In an article released by The Wall Street Journal this month, reporter Sumathi Reddy documented how hard this problem is to fight. The article is entitled “The Uphill Fight Against Fake Prescription Drugs”.

The issue of counterfeit pills is widespread with the largest contributor being online purchases. A lot of times this is from the dark web which isn’t too surprising. What is more surprising is the sales show up on Facebook a surprising amount of the time.

The pharmaceutical company, Pfizer reported 10,000 Facebook accounts or profiles selling counterfeit Pfizer medication.

In response, a spokeswoman for Facebook had this to say, “We have zero tolerance for any attempts to sell, trade or purchase any of those substances on Facebook or Instagram,” she says. “We take a very comprehensive approach to this because bad actors are constantly trying to change their tactics.”

But making a policy or saying your rules are against this doesn’t really do anything if they aren’t enforced. It is unacceptable that another company would have to report to Facebook that their product is being sold illegally on Facebook. Now while Facebook does try and pull down any drug-related posts if another company reports 10,000 times they have missed that is not a good sign.

Pfizer has been putting effort into stopping the counterfeit of their products. This is after in 2017 49 countries seized 12 million counterfeit Pfizer pills. Last year Pfizer partnered with law enforcement to buy 138 samples of Xanax on the dark web of which only 5% were authentic. The counterfeits ranged from sugar to fentanyl.

Its all well and good that Pfizer is working to stop counter fitting, however, the fact that their medication is such a hot ticket item for drug dealers and dark web salesmen should not be lost on us. Xanax is definitely a drug of abuse that is in high demand from many struggling with substance abuse. Instead of simply fighting the counterfeit of there pills Pfizer should probably reevaluate how addicting their product is that people are buying black market versions in bulk.

AUTHOR

Aaron

Aaron has been writing drug education articles and documenting the success of the Narconon program for over two years.

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