Dive Brief:

• The Food and Drug Administration is creating a campaign to warn doctors about companies distributing foreign, unregulated medications to providers. Beginning this week, they will be faxing flyers to physicians with information on spotting counterfeit drugs.
• Rogue companies have been found distributing foreign Botox, cancer drugs and other unapproved medicine in the United States at dramatically reduced prices. Regulators found flyers, for instance, peddling fake Botox at 25% the cost of the US medication.
• The FDA is recommending providers only purchase drugs from wholesale licensed distributors. The flyers they are sending out warn doctors to avoid medication with labels in a foreign language, with dosing instructions that are not familiar, that are missing safety information or have an unfamiliar product name.

Dive Insight:

According to the World Health Organization, the sell of illegal or fake medication totals approximately $430 billion a year. In developing countries, nearly half of all drugs sold may be fake. Medications sold on the Internet are particularly susceptible to being unregulated, so the FDA recommends physicians purchase from local wholesalers—all of whom will have to be licensed by 2015.

According to an April report from the National Association of Boards of Pharmacy that studied nearly 11,000 Internet drug outlets, almost 97% were not in compliance with US pharmacy laws and standards. Of these sites, almost half offered foreign medications; 88% did not require a prescription; nearly 62% have no physical address; and 15% of the sites were not secure, which can expose buyers to fraud.