- Undercover investigators for the world's largest drug
companies are quietly hunting in the capital cities of eastern Europe,
snooping around chemists, surfing websites and loitering on street corners.
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- High on the list of places to visit are Poland, Bulgaria
and Turkey, where they are tracking down counterfeit drugs and back-street
medicine factories which churn out millions of pounds' worth of fake pills
every year.
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- It is a global industry now worth more than £20bn
a year, a trade which is ruthlessly exploiting the internet and its lack
of regulatory control. Dubious offers for "lifestyle" medicines
such as Viagra now dominate unsolicited "spam" email adverts.
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- Many experts, including the World Health Organisation
(WHO), believe the problem will get much worse. These three countries are
all poised to join the European Union, and are havens for illegal drugs
factories and smugglers. Their long frontiers border countries such as
Russia that are notorious for the ready availability of fake drugs.
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- Poland is one of 10 countries that will enter the EU
on 1 May, and Bulgaria and Turkey are not far behind. According to the
WHO, that will make the EU even more vulnerable to the global trade in
illegal pharmaceutical drugs.
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- Dr Eshetu Wondemagegnehu, the WHO's expert on counterfeit
drugs, said the risks were "obvious". Similar problems have already
been seen in Africa and Asia, where up to 25 per cent of drugs sold are
fake or substandard. The EU's historically strict regulations would quickly
be undermined by far laxer controls in new member states. "From the
experience with tobacco smuggling in Europe, you can forecast that it can
lead to more counterfeiting and more counterfeit drugs appearing in Europe,"
he said.
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- The medicines most likely to dominate this illegal trade
are the lifestyle drugs that are already routinely faked in the US: the
erectile dysfunction drugs such as Viagra and Cialis and slimming drugs
such as Lipitor or Xenical. Genuine Viagra costs at least £7.65 per
100mg pill; many modern obesity "cures" can cost £1.65
per pill, and human growth hormones cost £900 per course. Their availability
is tightly controlled by EU regulations, so fraudsters see these high prices
as a great opportunity - selling cheaply made, adulterated, faked or placebo
drugs can lead to swift, easy profits.
-
- Pfizer, one of the few major pharmaceutical firms that
will openly discuss the trade, now routinely finds fake Viagra in Poland,
Russia and Bulgaria, where it has helped to close down three counterfeiting
factories. Much of it comes from China and south Asia.
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- The internet offers drug peddlers the most valuable tool
they have ever seen. Email security company Clearswift says Viagra and
diet pill offers on the internet totalled 40 per cent of the spam sent
to British email users last month.
-
- In Britain, the government Medicines and Healthcare products
Regulatory Agency (MHRA), now seizes about £3.2m-worth of illegally
sold or fake Viagra a year. Its enforcement group gets some 10 to 15 complaints
about dubious websites each month.
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- Although most are foreign-run, it has closed down seven
internet operations and forced seven other sites to stop making illegal
claims. Three website operators have been convicted for breaching the UK's
strict rules on selling prescription medicines.
-
- Yet Peter Lowe, a fraud expert at the Counterfeiting
Intelligence Bureau, said the agency is only scraping the surface of the
problem. "What the internet has done is enable counterfeiters to flog
their products in high-value markets. The fact that they are coming into
this country is a reality," he said.
-
- Experts claim the MHRA's investigators privately admit
that with extra resources, even more illegal internet operations would
be closed down. However, the Royal Pharmaceutical Society, which polices
Britain's chemists, continues to insist the problem in the UK is minimal
and under control.
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- The National Criminal Intelligence Service is also cautious
about the risks of a surge in drugs fraud. Its spokesman said there were
immense fears that the collapse of the Soviet Union would see violent Russian
mafia dominating organised crime in Europe, and that Albanian gangs threatened
the UK. Neither has happened.
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- However, John Theriault, a former FBI executive who now
runs Pfizer's global security operation, said the evidence of the impact
of eastern European drugs fraud was already compelling.
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- "We've uncovered counterfeit pharmaceuticals in
these countries and identified manufacturing operations in some of these
countries," he said. "I would agree completely that the accession
countries are going to contribute to the problem."
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- © 2003 Independent Digital (UK) Ltd
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- http://news.independent.co.uk/europe/story.jsp?story=482328
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