Publications

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 ...

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 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 ...

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 June 2026 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? 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 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 (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 ...

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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 ...