Editorial: Harmful counterfeits

Friday, Oct. 24, 2003 | 9:32 a.m.

The Food and Drug Administration and state regulators are concerned that consumers may be unwittingly using counterfeit drugs, which end up in drug stores from unscrupulous wholesalers. The FDA doesn't believe the problem is widespread, but the agency and state regulators are worried enough that they're investigating ways to clamp down on the distribution of counterfeit drugs, which can be diluted or contain harmful substances. Last week Nevada's Board of Pharmacy completed several days of hearings into allegations that two pharmaceutical wholesalers from Las Vegas received drugs from unauthorized drug distributors. In one case, the Board of Pharmacy alleges, a counterfeit AIDS drug was sold to a customer. The two wholesalers under scrutiny, Dutchess Business Services and Legend Pharmaceutical, deny they've done anything wrong. If the board finds the compa nies guilty, however, they could be fined and have their licenses revoked.

The Board of Pharmacy will resume taking testimony on the two Las Vegas pharmaceutical wholesalers in December, so it will be some time before we know their fate. Nevertheless, because regulators acknowledge that too often there is little monitoring of drugs once some wholesalers buy them from the manufacturer, it is encouraging that there is a move under way to better track drugs at the federal and state levels by requiring these companies to provide documentation as to how they obtained the drugs and where they came from.

One of the largest discoveries of counterfeiting involved fake Lipitor -- The Wall Street Journal reported recently that roughly 200,000 counterfeit bottles of the anti-cholesterol drug had to be recalled. Some other counterfeit drugs discovered include those for patients with anemia, cancer or AIDS. There is strict regulation of the makers of pharmaceutical drugs and the drug stores themselves. The same level of scrutiny should apply to the middlemen.