March 24, 2025: Cost-saving AFPs are exposing Americans to risky, unregulated medicine
Major Stories
“Alternative funding programs” are shifting expensive prescription coverage to illegal drug importation schemes.
Employers who self-fund their workers' health insurance are turning to cost-cutting “alternative funding programs” (AFPs), some of which outsource their prescriptions to foreign pharmacies dispensing non-FDA-approved medicine. The practice is illegal, and sidesteps the U.S. regulators who keep American medicines safe. Learn about the risks.
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Domestic News
Fake Adderall shippers received a combined ten years in federal prison.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) in Indianapolis seized four shipments containing a total of 15 vials of fake Botox and one vial of fake Dysport. Three of the packages were shipped from Great Britain; the fourth came from Indonesia.
A federal judge in Florida sentenced a Sacramento, California couple to a combined ten years in prison for conspiring to distribute methamphetamine. Over a six-month period in 2023, Vanessa and Ronald Kaiser shipped 169,000 pills, including counterfeit Adderall, to U.S. buyers who had purchased them from an online pharmacy run by foreign drug traffickers.
A resident of Hickman, Kentucky is facing charges for allegedly selling controlled substances. Federal agents found suspected counterfeit Adderall, Xanax, fentanyl pills and methamphetamine during searches of his mail and residence during the second week of March.
CBP shared this image from the Indianapolis seizure.
International News
Counterfeit medicines reported in Mexico, India, Pakistan, the Philippines and Nigeria.
Packaging that accompanied counterfeit Osimertinib tablets (COFEPRIS)
A review of alerts issued by COFEPRIS underscores ongoing concerns about medicine safety in Mexico. Notable warnings over the last six months include counterfeit treatments for lung and breast cancer, including a February 2025 warning about Osimertinib tablets in English packaging. The agency also reported fake blood thinners and fake Dysport bearing a lot number that appeared in a WHO alert issued in 2022.
A regional health authority in British Columbia warned that a shop in Surrey had sold unauthorized ayurvedic herbal products that contained heavy metals such as lead, mercury and arsenic.
Officials in Telangana, India seized counterfeit versions of an antihistamine, Montek-LC, while raiding a public market.
The Drug Regulatory Authority of Pakistan warned about fake antibiotic eye drops and counterfeit veterinary injections circulating in Punjab.
The Philippines' Food and Drug Administration issued an alert about counterfeit anti-rabies vaccines. It is the third such warning since 2020.
Nigeria’s National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control warned residents that a counterfeit birth control injection and fake anti-malaria medicines had been found in circulation.