China Wages New War against Counterfeit Medications

Anchor: The State Food and Drug Administration is waging a new war against counterfeit medications in China by releasing a blacklist with 33 fake drugs on it.

Given that the circulation of fake drugs spread on the Internet, insiders say tough surveillance should be put in place to stop illegal dealing.

He Fei has more.

Reporter: The medicines on the blacklist claimed to be able to treat chronic diseases such as diabetes and skin disease.

And according to drug watchdogs, the fake medicines haven't been seen on the shelves of drugstores, but were all sold via the Internet.

Yan Jiangying, spokeswoman of the State Food and Drug Administration, reveals that the Internet has become a new front for the sale of counterfeit drugs.

She says these sites exaggerated the potency of their drugs and posed as branches of well-known medical research institutions.

"The salespeople and so-called experts of these sites won't provide any information to consumers face to face. They can only be reached via the phone. Once we discover the illegal acts of these sites, we report them to the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, which will shut down these sites."

Last month China Central Television reported that Baidu and other search engines had profited from promoting three websites offering counterfeit drugs.

The report said the sites exploited a loophole in the system by piggybacking on legitimate websites to gain access to buy keywords.

Some experts have proposed a ban on online medication sales.

However, a researcher with the Institute of Pharmacy Administration at Peking University, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, disagrees.

"Online purchasing itself is not the cause of the circulation of counterfeit medication.
In countries like Canada and the United States, the purchasing of drugs via the Internet is a quite mature business. The governments keep a close eye on drug distributors. If consumers buy counterfeited medications from them, the distributors will be held accountable."

The researcher says China is gradually developing the online selling of drugs, and it is critical to inform people where to buy qualified drugs.

"People should learn that the State Food and Drug Administration has ratified 27 pharmaceutical companies to sell drugs to individuals via the Internet, but they can only sell over-the-counter drugs. The name list of these companies can be found on the website of the administration. I think we should make efforts to let consumers know that all other drug-selling sites are illegal."

For CRI, I'm He Fei.