Are You Buying Illegal Drugs?
By KATHERINE EBAN and J. AARON GRAHAM
NYT
LAST month, thieves cut through the roof of an Eli Lilly warehouse in Enfield, Conn., shimmied down a rope, disabled the alarms and made off with $75 million worth of psychiatric drugs, including the antidepressants Prozac and Cymbalta and the antipsychotic Zyprexa. It is thought to have been the largest pharmaceutical theft in history.
News reports expressed some puzzlement over the crime. Why would burglars go after medicines rather than diamonds or art? And when did pharmaceutical thieves graduate from Oxycontin stickups to the big time?
The answers lie in our haphazardly regulated pharmaceutical supply chain and the dangerous gray market that intersects it. As soon as medicines leave manufacturers’ loading docks, they enter a market teeming with middlemen, many legitimate but some not. The drugs may move through a dozen hands, through small secondary wholesalers and repackagers. With so many middlemen involved, thieves can easily unload stolen drugs, which may be resold to pharmacies and hospitals and dispensed to you and me.
If the drugs are real, why should we care? Because pharmaceuticals need to be stored properly — generally in dry air at a steady temperature. Thieves — and the secondary wholesalers who buy from them — don’t mind keeping their products in hot, humid conditions, which can degrade medicines or even alter their chemical composition.
(More here.)
NYT
LAST month, thieves cut through the roof of an Eli Lilly warehouse in Enfield, Conn., shimmied down a rope, disabled the alarms and made off with $75 million worth of psychiatric drugs, including the antidepressants Prozac and Cymbalta and the antipsychotic Zyprexa. It is thought to have been the largest pharmaceutical theft in history.
News reports expressed some puzzlement over the crime. Why would burglars go after medicines rather than diamonds or art? And when did pharmaceutical thieves graduate from Oxycontin stickups to the big time?
The answers lie in our haphazardly regulated pharmaceutical supply chain and the dangerous gray market that intersects it. As soon as medicines leave manufacturers’ loading docks, they enter a market teeming with middlemen, many legitimate but some not. The drugs may move through a dozen hands, through small secondary wholesalers and repackagers. With so many middlemen involved, thieves can easily unload stolen drugs, which may be resold to pharmacies and hospitals and dispensed to you and me.
If the drugs are real, why should we care? Because pharmaceuticals need to be stored properly — generally in dry air at a steady temperature. Thieves — and the secondary wholesalers who buy from them — don’t mind keeping their products in hot, humid conditions, which can degrade medicines or even alter their chemical composition.
(More here.)
Powered by Blogger
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home