Counterfeit Medications at the Pharmacy

Protect yourself by looking for signs that your medication might not be the real deal

Lehigh Valley, Pa. (July 25, 2006) – The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) estimates that one percent of all prescription drugs may be counterfeit, and has pursued some 90 cases of supposed counterfeit drugs in the past two years alone. It’s a problem, the FDA says, that is only going to get worse.

“As more Americans look to get cheaper drugs from sources in Canada, Mexico and various places on the Internet, the safety of the drugs you’re buying needs to be considered,” says Brian Lenich, director of the Lehigh Valley Hospital’s (LVH) Health Spectrum Pharmacy Services. “You should always go to a pharmacy you trust, and you should avoid searching for Internet bargains, because you just don’t know if they are real or fake.”

Lenich oversees all four of the LVH’s Health Spectrum Pharmacy Services locations. When they get a warning from the FDA or other pharmacies, he says they immediately check their stock to make sure it’s completely authentic.

“In all the years that I’ve been at the Health Spectrum Pharmacy Services, we have never discovered a counterfeit medication,” says Lenich. “But we are constantly checking to make sure our drugs are authentic.”

Lenich says the Health Spectrum Pharmacy Services biggest defense against counterfeit drugs is really its wholesaler. “We use one of the biggest wholesalers in the country which is important because they have pledged to buy drugs direct from the manufacturers, and never from third party suppliers.”

Lenich also emphasized that people need to be aware of what’s been counterfeited, and to watch out for those products by familiarizing themselves with the packaging and labels, shape of the medications and color. “If anything looks out of the ordinary, call your pharmacy and report the problem. If you’ve bought a counterfeit drug it could cause serious harm to your body. You’d be lucky if you got a placebo that had no affect at all.”

The FDA will soon carry out measures to protect Americans from counterfeit drugs including a pedigree program that tracks the drugs from the instant they are manufactured to when they are, at last, stocked on pharmacy shelves.

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