Not too long ago, news channels were showing pictures of senior citizens on buses headed to Canada to buy inexpensive drugs. State governors such as Rod Blagojevich promised to defy the federal government and purchase “cheap drugs” from across the border. The passage of the Medicare Part D drug benefit and its successful implementation have cooled the ardor of most Americans to seek drugs from outside the United States, but it has not stopped the flow of illegal pharmaceuticals across the border, specifically the flow of counterfeit drugs.
In fact, the traffic in counterfeit drugs has actually accelerated. The February 2010 issue of The International Journal of Clinical Practice reported that the sale of counterfeit drugs has almost doubled in the past five years and is expected to reach $75 billion in 2010. Although any market as large as the pharmaceutical market is bound to attract bad actors, several factors make drug counterfeiting a problem particularly difficult to solve.
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