Publications
The Partnership for Safe Medicines develops materials to keep policymakers, pharmacists, law enforcement and all Americans up-to-date on major issues that effect the safety and legitimacy of U.S. medicines.
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Handouts
Audience: Patients | Providers | Pharmacists | Law Enforcement
Topics: Foreign Drug Importation | The Fake Pill Crisis | Counterfeit Drugs in the U.S. | Explainers
For Patients
For Providers
For Pharmacists
On foreign drug importation
For Law Enforcement
Explainers
Publications Archive
Employers, do you know how much you’re paying PBMs?
Employers, do you know how much you're paying PBMs? Pharmacy benefit managers (PBM) tactics have increased costs for patients and healthcare purchasers all while driving community pharmacies out of business and failing to deliver on their promise to lower medication costs. Learn more about these tactics and what states are ...
Why not price caps?
Why are price caps a bad solution for medicine affordability? Americans need affordable access to medicines, but upper payment limits (UPLs) set by prescription drug affordability boards and Medicare Maximum Fair Prices (MFPs) are not viable solutions. In our complex drug supply chain, these price caps could bankrupt pharmacies and ...
Prescription Drug Freight Fraud Report, November 2025
Prescription Drug Freight Fraud Report, November 2025 Our latest analysis of FDA import records shows a continuation of the troubling patterns we've been documenting since February. From September 1 to October 31, 2025, large-scale freight fraud involving GLP-1s, oncology drugs, and other high-demand pharmaceuticals continued unabated, and in several areas ...
Intelligence Alert: Unlicensed med spas are selling unregulated diabetes and weight loss injectables that threaten public safety
INTELLIGENCE ALERT: Distribution of unregulated, uninspected, unsanitary and potentially unsafe diabetes and weight loss injectables through unlicensed med spas poses immediate threat to public safety Based on recent investigative reporting by the Partnership for Safe Medicines (PSM), patients inyour state may be receiving weight loss injectables from unlicensed sources that ...
Threats to HIV patients from criminals in the drug supply chain
Publication: Threats to HIV patients from criminals in the drug supply chain Since 2019, federal prosecutors, drug manufacturers, and patient safety organizations have uncovered extensive criminal schemes targeting HIV medicines at every point in the supply chain. These schemes undermine trust in the healthcare system, and they endanger patients. Read ...
Prescription Drug Freight Fraud Report, October 2025
Prescription drug freight fraud, October 2025 Our analysis of large-scale commercial imports of semaglutide, tirzepatide, apixaban, pembrolizumab, and antibiotics from March to August of 2025 showed cancer drugs masquerading as antibiotics, semaglutide supposedly manufactured at a home hardware store, and over 120 kilograms of tirzepatide from unregistered facilities marked for ...
Med spas need stronger regulation
Med spas need stronger regulation The medical spa industry is expanding so quickly that it's outstripping existing regulatory frameworks: Just thirteen states have issued med spa regulations or guidance and only four of those require med spas to be licensed or registered. Yet these businesses need firm oversight to ensure ...
Prescription Drug Freight Fraud Report, September 2025
Prescription Drug Freight Fraud Report, September 2025 Screenshot of a listing for bulk tirzepatide sales, September 2025 Our analysis of data from June and July revealed hundreds of pharmaceutical shipments that entered the U.S. from facilities no one would expect, including unregistered Chinese exporters and alternative medicine clinics abroad. We ...
Handout: The fake pill trade hasn’t gone away
Handout: The fake pill trade hasn't gone away It's been 10 years since deadly counterfeit prescription pills began killing Americans. News about fake pill deaths has become commonplace and advocates have made progress to protect lives, but many people still don't know about this threat or the pill presses that ...
Prescription Drug Freight Fraud Report, July 2025
What if your tirzepatide shipment came from a Brazilian beauty clinic? Or a vial of semaglutide was manufactured, supposedly, at a Costco in Toronto? In April and May 2025, dozens of shipments of semaglutide, tirzepatide, apixaban, and antibiotics entered the U.S. from facilities that aren't in the FDA's drug manufacturing ...
Pill press update: January through June 2025
Policy people became generally aware of pill presses with the rise of the opioid crisis: selling illegal fentanyl in powder form to people was one thing, but making counterfeit oxycodone pills with a pill press was much deadlier. Illegal pill presses and molds continue to create the fake pills that ...
Prescription Drug Freight Fraud Report, May 2025
Prescription Drug Freight Fraud Report, May 2025 What if your diabetes medication was manufactured at a gas station? Or your blood thinners were mislabeled and shipped in from an unverified address in Colombia? In March 2025, dozens of pharmaceutical shipments entered the U.S. that were manufactured in places no one ...
Handout: Illegal ingredients linked to knockoff weight loss drugs pouring in from foreign sources
Compounded versions of GLP-1 injectable treatments for diabetes and obesity have surged in popularity despite a lack the safety and efficacy assurances. The FDA has warned that these knockoff versions sometimes contain illicit semaglutide or tirzepatide-the active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) in weight loss drugs. Working with George Karavetsos, former director ...
Prescription drug affordability boards by the numbers
Prescription drug affordability boards by the numbers (March 2025) Since prescription drug affordability boards (PDABS) were first started in 2020 in Maryland, they've been copied in Colorado, Minnesota, Oregon, Washington, and New Jersey. Their goal has been to lower the price of medicine, but they haven't yet saved any money. ...
Prescription Drug Affordability Boards by the numbers
Prescription Drug Affordability Boards by the numbers March 2025 States across the country are experimenting with Prescription Drug Affordability Boards (PDABs) to address the price of medicine. Each state has a different approach. Several exist to negotiate supplemental Medicaid rebates; others make recommendations to limit costs. A third group of ...
Handout: What is an Alternative Funding Program?
Handout: What is an Alternative Funding Program? 65% of U.S. workers get healthcare coverage through insurance self-funded by their employers, and employers are continually trying to keep those insurance costs in budget. Recently, many employers are controlling those costs by forcing their employees to use illegal, foreign pharmacies to obtain ...
New report reveals illegal ingredients for knockoff weight loss drugs flooding into U.S. from foreign sources, endangering patient safety
New report reveals illegal ingredients for knockoff weight loss drugs flooding into U.S. from foreign sources, endangering patient safety The Partnership for Safe Medicines and an FDA law enforcement expert conducted the first-of-its-kind analysis. FDA regulators must enforce restrictions on unsafe drug imports to protect Americans. WASHINGTON, D.C. (Feb. 20, ...
Five years of PDABs: broken promises, rising costs, and risks to access
Five years of PDABs: broken promises, rising costs, and risks to access (January 2025) Prescription Drug Affordability Boards (PDABs) have been created in several states with the goal to lower prescription drug costs for patients. One of the oldest, Maryland's, is five years old, but it has yet to fulfill ...
Threat Alert: Medicine designed to mimic regulated pharmaceuticals for sale online at Etsy.com
Threat Alert: Medicine designed to mimic regulated pharmaceuticals for sale online at Etsy.com March 2024 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 ...
How low PBM reimbursements ultimately endanger US patients
How low PBM reimbursements ultimately endanger US drug safety The United States has recently experienced several significant counterfeit medicine outbreaks in which fake or diverted medicines has reached U.S. pharmacies. One driver for these incidents is the economic climate pharmacy benefit managers have created by systematically under reimbursing pharmacies. Check ...
PSM Advisory Board approves policy resolution on reimbursement practices and supply chain safety
The PSM Governing and Advisory Boards has approved the following resolution: When pharmacies buy and dispense medicine for patients, if they are reimbursed below the cost of acquisition of medicines, they are put in a difficult situation. They need to buy medicine, but at prices that no legitimate seller can ...
Explainer: eBay and the Department of Justice settle over pill press sales
Explainer: eBay and the Department of Justice settle over pill press sales On January 31, 2024, eBay and the U.S. Department of Justice announced a settlement: In return for not prosecuting eBay for alleged violations of the Controlled Substances Act (CSA) related to the sale of pill presses and encapsulating ...
Are Canadian patients struggling with drug shortages already?
Canada has 38 million citizens, and Florida has 22 million. If Florida starts importing medicine from Canada, will it worsen already existing drug shortages in Canada? PSM's Shabbir Imber Safdar spoke with Canadian patient advocate Durhane Wong-Rieger about drug shortages in Canada. Learn more about Florida's plan to import medicine ...
Teach Your Community With These Conference Slides
Teach your community with these conference slides. Are you organizing a conference? Running slides between conference sessions and during breaks is a great way to fit in a little extra information for your community members-and there's a lot to know about counterfeit medicines in the U.S. These Q&A slides offer ...
Protect Your Patients and Your Practice
PSM and the American Medical Women's Association worked together on this resource for physicians. Download a PDF copy for your own reference. Download this resource
Why won’t Canadian drug importation work?
Why won't Canadian drug importation work? January 2023 Download our factsheet: Why won't Canadian importation work?
Pandemic counterfeits demonstrate the danger of Canadian drug importation
Pandemic counterfeits demonstrate the danger of Canadian drug importation January 2023 Download our factsheet Pandemic counterfeits demonstrate the danger of Canadian drug importation.
What Canadians are saying about importation
What Canadians are saying about importation January 2023 Download our factsheet citing Canadian opinions about importation..
Canada doesn’t have track and trace
Canada doesn't have track and trace January 2023 Download our factsheet about how Canadian importation breaks the U.S. track and trace system.
Illegal Pill Presses Pose Serious, Nationwide Threat to American Patients and Communities
Illegal Pill Presses Pose Serious, Nationwide Threat To American Patients And Communities WASHINGTON, D.C. (May 3, 2021) - Today, the Partnership for Safe Medicines and the National Association of Drug Diversion Investigators released an updated report titled Illegal Pill Presses: An Overlooked Threat to American Patients. The report shows that, ...
Are safety-tested imported drugs still cheaper? No. They are more expensive.
Testing medicine for legitimacy is a complicated process. Across 24 different prescription medicines, the average cost to test a single dose is $2,750. However, ensuring that a batch of 100 pills is 90% certain to be safe requires testing at least 22 pills. Achieving 99.999% certainty requires even more testing, ...
Criminal Internet Pharmacy Networks Are Capitalizing on COVID-19.
In May 2020, the National Association of Boards of Pharmacy (NABP) released Rogue Online Pharmacies in the Time of Pandemic: Capitalizing on Misinformation and Fear, which focuses on how established fake pharmacy networks have pivoted to cash in on the coronavirus. PSM's illustrated version of the report offers a compact ...
How Many Tests Need to Be Performed to Know That a Batch of Pills is Safe?
Testing medicine for legitimacy is a complicated process. Across 24 different prescription medicines, the average cost to test a single dose is $2,750. However, ensuring that a batch of 100 pills is 90% certain to be safe requires testing at least 22 pills. Achieving 99.999% certainty requires even more testing, ...
Avoid COVID scams by buying medicine safely – Read our tips in English and en Español
Download our guide, AVOID SCAMS & COUNTERFEITS: Quick Tips to Safely Purchase Medicines Online (in English | en Español) to learn more about how to protect yourself and your loved ones from fake COVID-19 treatments.
HHS comments come in overwhelmingly against Canadian drug importation proposal
HHS comments come in overwhelmingly against Canadian drug importation proposal March 2020 Yesterday ended a 78-day comment period for the White House's proposal to import medicine from Canada. In all, over 1,000 comments were filed. Overwhelmingly, these comments opposed the proposed rule or expressed skepticism that the rule could meet ...
Infographic: Counterfeiting By The Numbers
Download Counterfeiting by the Numbers In January 2020, The U.S. Department of Homeland Security released Combating Trafficking in Counterfeit and Pirated Goods. The report documents the extraordinary scale of the global counterfeiting market and its effects across all economic sectors—including medicines. Counterfeits are ubiquitous across the whole world, including the ...
How do you test whether a medication is legitimate?
Testing medicine for legitimacy is a complicated process. Across 24 different prescription medicines, the average cost to test a single dose is $2,750. However, ensuring that a batch of 100 pills is safe requires testing at least 22 pills. To learn more about this topic, read PSM's summary: safedr.ug/Acri-Explained. Click ...
Myth: We are getting the same drugs Canadians take
Myth: We are getting the same drugs Canadians take September 2019
Illegal Pill Presses: An Overlooked Threat to American Patients (2019)
The supply of and demand for dangerous counterfeit and illegally-imported medications has created one of our country's most serious health challenges-and the prevalence of illegal pill presses are contributing to this crisis. For more information Visit the report launch site Read our 2021 update.
Black Market HIV Drugs in the U.S.
Black Market HIV Drugs in the U.S. February 2018 Download our reference about black market HIV medicines.
Rogues Gallery Comics: An Illustrated Guide To Counterfeit Drug Crime
Rogues Gallery Comics: An Illustrated Guide To Counterfeit Drug Crime Ever wonder about what’s behind the news for counterfeit drug crime? The Rogues Gallery Comic Book Series tells the real-life stories of fake drug criminals and their cases. In volume one, you can learn all about the Greedy Doctor that ...
5 Kinds Of Poisons Found In Counterfeit Drugs
There are a lot of shady ingredients that go into counterfeit medications that consumers can be exposed to by buying directly from unlicensed drug sellers on the internet, or when medical professionals purchase medications from outside the secured supply chain. Here is a compendium of five types of poison that ...
Do YOU Know How to Decode a Fake Pharmacy Website?
A quick perusal of the Internet will turn up a vast array of websites claiming to offer pharmacy services. Yet only 3% of online pharmacies are legitimate. How do you decode a fake pharmacy website? A quick perusal of the Internet will turn up a vast array of websites claiming ...