Dive Brief:
- U.S. entities belonging to Canada Drugs, including CanadaDrugs.com Ltd. Partnership, Rockley Ventures Ltd. and River East Supplies Ltd., have now pleaded guilty to the sale of phony pharmaceuticals, including well-known cancer drug Avastin, the Wall Street Journal reported.
- The entities will hand over $29 million dollars, an amount equal to the proceeds from the illegal sales from 2009 to 2012, and a fine of $5 million dollars. They will also surrender their internet domain names and halt sales of counterfeit or misbranded drugs.
- Though the company initially began by selling authentic yet lower cost drugs to the U.S., over time it began sourcing from overseas vendors without credentialed facilities.
Dive Insight:
The lack of transparency within pharmaceutical supply chains likely contributed to the Canadian counterfeit drug controversy.
The variety of issues within pharmaceutical supply chains run the gamut from those being charged with contributing to the opioid crisis, to others so tightly pressed that even hospitals are having to forego fully stocked crash carts.
Surging prices, imports and shortages: all are symptomatic of a dysfunctional supply chain. Added to that is the fact that 78% of hospitals still rely on manual inventory management and multilevel complications are the result.
Greater transparency, consistent price points throughout the industry, and other basic supply chain management techniques are necessary in order to prevent interest in dangerous discount drugs imported from labs without standards or medical oversight.
While a faulty drug supply chain may have contributed to the opioid crisis, pharmaceutical companies will need to get their supply chains in order if they are to avoid blame for another drug crisis and subsequent fines and regulations.
