Medicine labels a possible protection against counterfeit

Pharmaceutical labels should have some way to signal to processors and customers that their contents are genuine. Unfortunately, as one recent story by a local affiliate of NBC suggests, third parties and other non-traditional sources of medication leave the possibility that the drugs a person uses can be completely unapproved and filled with dangerous, toxic elements.

The article claims that a high percentage of medicines obtained through “online pharmacies” can be fraudulent and not work, whereas PBS pins this trend largely on criminals looking to increase their profit. The PBS story also quotes statistics from the World Health Organization claiming that the amount of false drugs on the market could be between “1 percent and 10 percent” of the total global share.

However, despite the challenges in sorting out the real drugs from the false ones, this piece claims that there are some obvious mistakes that can appear on the packaging of the knock-offs, like misspellings and suspiciously different graphic elements. These affect all kinds of medicines, from those that focus on blood clots to commonly known drugs like Adderall. 

Whatever the source of these fake drugs might be, both consumers and producers of the “real” versions should take caution to lower the chances of danger. This is especially important for the latter, who can use custom label solutions to make their product harder to copy.

It might take a lot of effort and chemical apparatuses to differentiate between chemicals, but pharmaceutical producers can concentrate on making difficult-to-replicate packaging that discourages thieves and earns the respect of distributors and customers alike.