Tuesday, 19 May 2020

FAKE drugs

There is a serious safety factor to Pfizer's investigation against the Mills family who are accused of selling counterfeit drugs over the internet (see yesterday's post). In February at the Toronto Police Fraud Squad conference, Lorne Lipkus, a lawyer specialising in counterfeiting, spoke about several deaths caused by counterfeit drugs. With Viagra and Cialis the danger is caused by too much of the active ingredient which can cause heart attacks. There have also been a number of documented cases in which fatalities were caused by counterfeit drugs such as in the 1990s in which 119 children died in India and Haiti after being treated with toxic cough syrup. In Niger 2,500 people died after 50,000 meningitis vaccine doses were supplied to the country.
Last year Ireland's EU Commissioner, Charlie McCreevy, said the EU saw "massive diversification" in the number of counterfeit products. In 2007 the EU reported a 50 per cent increase in the number of counterfeit items that threaten human health, such as fake cigarettes, Viagra and food being removed from sale. Four million packges of fake drugs were also seized at the borders of the EU. The World Health Organisation expects the global market in counterfeit drugs to be worth €70 billion next year. Make sure you know where that magic pill came from.

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Monday, 18 May 2020

BITTER pill

High Court cases in both Ireland and the UK last week provided an insight into the global scale of the counterfeit drugs trade. Drugs giant Pfizer got a court order after claiming British national Andrew Mills, also known as Butcher, was behind an internet-based operation selling allegedly Chinese-made drugs. As a result a raid was carried out on his house in County Monaghan, Ireland, to seize various materials. Pfizer claim Mills and his parents were selling drugs over the internet for the last three years with a minimum estimated annual turnover of stg£465,000. The High Court in London is expected to hear a case against the three members of the Mills family.

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