Taiwanese Health Minister Discusses Crackdown on Fake Drugs
The government in Taiwan is currently cracking down on a rapid proliferation in the trade of fake drugs, the China Post reports.
Taiwanese Health Minister Yang Chih-liang said during a press conference that counterfeit drugs posed a more serious problem than drug trafficking. The government has been strongly cracking down on counterfeit drugs since March, including pursuing 260 television advertisements featuring fake medicine while confiscating 4 times the amount of the fake drugs as that of the year before as of September, Yang added.
The news source reports that underground radio stations, newspapers and television advertisements routinely promote counterfeit drugs to the Taiwanese public.
In his press conference, Yang discussed the government crackdown, asking the public to ignore advertisements for counterfeit medications and pointing out their potential dangers. He also reported that the government had confiscated more than 7 million fake pills between January and September of this year, representing a more than fourfold increase in that statistic from 2009.
According to the source, the crackdown is being executed jointly between the Department of Health, the Ministry of Justice, the Ministry of the Interior, the Ministry of Finance, the Coast Guard Administration, the National Communications Commission, the Government Information Office and the Consumer Protection Commission.