Policy/Enforcement News

Three people have been hit with charges related to the burglary of a pharmacy in Susquehanna County, Pennsylvania, according to the Scranton Times-Tribune. Reddon’s Pharmacy was robbed on October 29 by Darryl Chaffee, 36, and Jerrod Decker, 24, who stole up to $100,000 worth of prescription medications. Chaffee and Decker have been charged with felony theft,…

Malaysia’s Drug Control Agency (DCA) has banned the sale, possession, distribution and consumption of two unregulated traditional products found to contain controlled drugs, reports Malaysian national news agency Bernama. DCA analysis of the two products revealed the presence of regulated substances that may only be legally obtained with a prescription.

The Sindh High Court (SHC) in Karachi, Pakistan, has rejected the bail application of two men who allegedly trafficked in counterfeit medications, according to the Daily Times. The SHC division bench consisting of Justice Gulzar Ahmad and Justuce Imam Bukhsh Balouch decided against issuing bail after hearing arguments from the prosecution against the two defendants, Muhammad…

One of Ghana’s ministries recently held a workshop regarding the possibility of bodies of water being contaminated by counterfeit drugs. The Ministry of Environment, Science and Technology held the workshop, titled “Drugs and the Environment: The Development Country Perspective,” as part of the 10th Annual Meeting of the International Society of Pharmacovigilance (ISoP), according to…

A Zambian pharmacist has called on the government to empower the agency in charge of issues relating to counterfeit drugs in the country, reports the Zambia Post. “The Pharmaceutical Regulatory Agency needs to be equipped properly. It is a professional body that works very hard to check on the quality of medicines the Zambian patients consume.…

Online pharmaceutical spam organization, Spamit.com, has been implicated in the use of Bredolab, a botnet that hijacked personal computers to use to spread spam. KrebsOnSecurity reported that Georg Avanesov, age 27, was arrested by Armenian police on suspicion of being the curator of Bredolab, a botnet that has infected approximately 3 million computers a month.…

In Chennai, India, the Madras high court rules that malaria testing kits are pharmaceutical products, subject to the Drugs and Cosmetics Acts. It has ordered a detailed probe into the sale of fake malaria detection kits to city hospitals, and has asked the central and state governments to launch a campaign to spread awareness about…

The fight against counterfeit drugs affects every country and that is why it is important that nations work together to stop the deadly scourge. This fact is not lost on Nigeria, which is working with India to ensure that all medicines brought into the African nation are authentic. According to AllAfrica.com, most of the pharmaceutical products…

The government in Taiwan is currently cracking down on a rapid proliferation in the trade of fake drugs, the China Post reports. Taiwanese Health Minister Yang Chih-liang said during a press conference that counterfeit drugs posed a more serious problem than drug trafficking. The government has been strongly cracking down on counterfeit drugs since March,…

The beginning of a criminal investigation by Russian authorities in Moscow of a prominent spammer has resulted in a significant reduction in the amount of spam advertising from illegal online pharmacies, reports the New York Times. The center of the investigation, Igor A. Gusev, has been linked to the website “SpamIt”, an organization that provides…