By ELAINE KURTENBACH
BANGKOK (AP) — Practically the entire world’s 35,000 on-line pharmacies are being run illegally and customers who use them danger getting ineffective or harmful medication, based on the U.S. Commerce Consultant’s annual report on “ notorious markets.” The report additionally singled out 19 nations over issues about counterfeit or pirated merchandise.
The report says 96% of on-line pharmacies have been discovered to be violating the regulation, many working and not using a license and promoting medicines with out prescriptions and security warnings.
Their web sites typically seem like authentic e-commerce platforms, typically with false claims that they’re accredited by the Meals and Drug Administration, stated the report, launched Wednesday. The FDA and U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration have each issued warnings about dangers of shopping for prescription medicines from such sources.
It cited a survey by the Alliance for Secure On-line Pharmacies’ International Basis that discovered practically one in 4 People who’ve used on-line pharmacies reported having encountered substandard, faux or dangerous medicines.
Final yr, Federal prosecutors reported {that a} community of unlawful drug sellers based mostly within the U.S., the Dominican Republic and India had packaged doubtlessly lethal artificial opioids into drugs disguised as frequent prescribed drugs and offered thousands and thousands of them by way of faux on-line drugstores, federal prosecutors stated Monday. Not less than 9 folks died of narcotics poisoning between August 2023 and June 2024 after consuming the counterfeit drugs, the indictment stated.
Other than the dangers of utilizing medication that will include inert components or people who may trigger allergic reactions, the medicines are generally made in unsanitary circumstances, stated the report, which didn’t give annual statistics for individuals who might have died or in any other case been harmed.
The USTR’s annual report cited examples from inside america, however and likewise talked about dangers of imported components together with fentanyl from China. Lots of the illicit on-line pharmacies are based mostly outdoors the U.S.
The “Notorious Markets List” did laud progress in combating counterfeit and pirated items.
In a single case, U.S. authorities, business teams and the police collaborated in shutting down a Hanoi, Vietnam-based piracy ring, Fmovies, and different associated piracy websites, in July and August.
The report stated the world’s then-largest pirated motion pictures website had drawn greater than 6.7 billion visits from January 2023 to June 2024.
In one other Vietnam-linked case, two folks working pirate tv platform BestBuyIPTV have been convicted and ordered to pay fines and forfeit property.
The report additionally cited crackdowns on on-line piracy in Brazil and the UK and busts of sellers of counterfeit purses, clothes and footwear in Kuwait.
However issues stay with cyberlockers that thwart efforts to limit piracy of flicks and different content material and of so-called “bulletproof” web service suppliers, or ISPs, that promise folks utilizing them leeway for utilizing pirate websites, it stated.
One such ISP is Avito, a Russian-based advert platform that allegedly lets sellers promote counterfeit merchandise.
The report additionally pointed to social-commerce website Pinduoduo and to Douyin Mall, a Chinese language on-line platform owned by Tiktok proprietor ByteDance. It stated the purchasing platforms have sought to construct up protections however that they nonetheless host many counterfeit items.
It additionally named Shopee, a Singapore-based on-line and cellular e-commerce website, saying some country-focused platforms serving Southeast Asia and South American had higher observe information in combating piracy than others.
IndiaMART, an huge business-to-business market in India, nonetheless presents a slew of counterfeit merchandise, it stated.
Whereas a big share of theft of mental property has moved on-line, the report additionally highlighted actual world places infamous for promoting counterfeit merchandise, together with markets in Turkey, bazaars within the United Arab Emirates and Saigon Sq. Purchasing Mall in Vietnam’s Ho Chi Minh Metropolis.
The report stated Bangkok’s MBK Heart, an enormous mall of about 2,000 shops, had actively cracked down on counterfeiting, although such merchandise nonetheless could be discovered there.
