Safe Medicines: True Crime and Medicine Safety
As long as there have been pharmaceuticals, there has been pharmaceutical crime. The Partnership for Safe Medicines is a coalition of patients, manufacturers, pharmacists, and distributors that all support greater awareness of the dangers of counterfeit medicine. The Pharmaceutical Crime podcast covers crime, raising the profile of the agencies that go after counterfeit criminals. We also cover policies, current and proposed, that might increase or decrease the danger of counterfeits. Learn more at our website at safemedicines.org.
Episodes
In March, a Las Vegas man got 8 years for distributing at least 300 pounds of illegally imported tapentadol, an opioid painkiller, via his online storefront. He also sold steroids and prescription muscle relaxants, ADHD meds and more.
Has a patient ever come into your pharmacy with a perfectly good package of medicine and asked for a clean bottle or box? This is something pharmacists are seeing, and it might be worth paying closer attention to.
In this emergency podcast recorded on Friday, April 21, former prosecutor Sam Louis, pharmaceutical wholesale and traceability expert Ron Bone, and PSM's executive director Shabbir Imber Safdar discuss what is likely happening in the case now, and talk about previous Botox cases.
What are the investigators likely hunting for at this moment, and what are we likely to see next?
In February, Alabama resident Sherri McCain agreed to plead guilty to mailing illegally imported prescription drugs like Xanax, gabapentin and tramadol. From 2017 to 2021 she accepted bulk packages of the drugs and reshipped them to buyers in 25 states.
Last month law enforcement in Delhi, India broke up a multi-million dollar counterfeit oncology drug ring that sold thousands of vials of fake cancer treatments that were actually filled with an anti-fungal. They sold the medicines to drugstores, patients and medical tourists in India but the fake medicines also reached China and the U.S.
On February 19 Safe Chain Solutions, LLC agreed to forfeit $2.7 million to settle a lawsuit with Gilead Sciences over the alleged distribution of secondhand HIV medicines to licensed U.S. pharmacies. GIlead named the company as part of a ring that sold 85,000 bottles of counterfeit HIV medicine to licensed U.S. pharmacies. Learn more about fake HIV meds.
Patients don't know they risk their lives when they take supplements that contain actual medications not listed on the labels. Learn more.
Nashville officials warned of xyalzine threat. Learn more about this on our website at www.safemedicines.org.
Etsy is an online marketplace that most people associate with vintage and handcrafted items. However, there is also a thriving trade in chemicals on the site, and some vendors sell homemade versions of highly regulated pharmaceuticals. They are sold with a thin veneer of plausible deniability in clear violation of Etsy's policies. When vendors list these items on Etsy.com, they can be a public health threat.
Some items or shops are...
Though it sounds great, the ways in which Prescription Drug Affordability Boards are operating have negative implications for patients, funding of 340B programs, pharmacies, and the safety of the supply chain.
PSM's Shabbir Imber Safdar and CANN CEO Jen Laws go in depth to talk about what PDABs are, how the tools they have create unintended consequences, and what dangerous situations they are likely to create.
Listen to our congressional briefing panels! In May 2022, PSM joined experts for an online congressional briefing to discuss the implications of Canadian and foreign prescription drug importation proposals on our ongoing ability to protect the U.S. drug supply.
Speakers: Shabbir Imber Safdar, Executive Director, PSM
Dr. Kenneth McCall, Pharmacist & Professor of Pharmacy at the University of New England
Andrea Thomas, Fentanyl ...
Over the past decade, PBMs have been cutting the reimbursements pharmacies receive for the medicine they dispense to insured patients into smaller and smaller amounts. In many places, those reimbursements don’t fully cover the acquisition cost of medicine. Pharmacies now routinely dispense medication that they lose money on.
This is by design. A pharmacist sent us the 2024 contract for a major PBM and it shows that dispensing brand...
Arizona-based Nootropics Depot will pay a forfeiture of $2.4 million for selling a bunch of unapproved drugs, including tianeptine, an antidepressant that's not approved in the U.S. but shows up in supplements. In fact, nine states have banned tianeptine because it's addictive and caused seizures, loss of consciousness and death.
A federal grand jury in California indicted two men for their alleged roles in a darknet-based drug trafficking scheme that sold over 120,000 fentanyl pills and 20 pounds of methamphetamine to approximately 1400 customers in all 50 states. Two additional men, Rajiv Srinivasan and Michael Ta, pleaded guilty for their roles in the ring earlier this year, admitting that five deaths had been linked to their activities. The FBI’s Joint ...
Another black market HIV case has been successfully prosecuted.
Over the past decade, PBMs have been cutting the reimbursements pharmacies receive for the medicine they dispense to insured patients into smaller and smaller amounts. In many places, those reimbursements don’t fully cover the acquisition cost of medicine.
Pharmacies now routinely dispense medication that they lose money on. This is by design. A pharmacist sent us the 2024 contract for a major PBM and it shows that dispensing brand...
On January 31, the Department of Justice (DOJ) announced that eBay had agreed to pay $59 million to settle allegations it had not followed recordkeeping and reporting requirements for the sale of pill presses and encapsulating machines that are specified in the Controlled Substances Act. The $59 million settlement is a signal to other online marketplaces that the federal government will not tolerate the unregulated sale of pill ...
Why did more than 100 children across the country with treatable cancer suddenly spike high fevers? Some fell into comas. Four died. Learn more about this mystery in Colombia.
Senator Mike Braun, the ranking member on the Senate Special Committee on Aging released a report examining the four-fold increase in overdose deaths among Americans 65 and older over the last 20 years. The report recommended increased research into the problem, as well as specific outreach educating seniors about counterfeit medicines made with fentanyl.
A Chicago, Illinois man with diabetes had a seizure and went into a coma after injecting himself with an Ozempic pen that turned out to be a counterfeit filled with insulin.
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