The Terrible Human Cost of Counterfeit Medicine
In this four minute documentary, Carrie Luther, who lost her son to counterfeit medicine, and former FDA Office of Criminal Investigations director George Karavetsos talk about the human costs that people so often gloss over when discussing drug importation.
Drug Importation Endangers U.S. Patients
The United States already has a counterfeit medicine problem.
- Every state in the country has had a counterfeit drug incident since 2010.
- As of February 2019, authorities in 46 states have found counterfeit prescription pills made with deadly fentanyl or fentanyl analogues in circulation.
- In 2012, the FDA discovered imported cancer treatments that contained no active ingredient in the American drug supply.
- Between 2012 and 2016, the FDA warned more than 3,000 medical practices to stop buying medicine from unlicensed foreign pharmacies.
Learn why drug importation cannot be made safe, and how past importation efforts have failed.
Carrie Luther's son, Tosh, died in October 2015 after taking a quarter of a Xanax pill that he didn't know was a fentanyl-laced counterfeit.
