Counterfeit drugs could prove lethal - UN

Abuse of prescription drugs is about to exceed the use of illicit street narcotics worldwide, according to a UN global watchdog.

It warned that the shift had spawned a lethal new trade in counterfeit painkillers, sedatives and other medicines potent enough to kill.

Prescription drug abuse already has outstripped traditional illegal drugs such as heroin, cocaine and Ecstasy in parts of Europe, Africa and South Asia, the UN-affiliated International Narcotics Control Board said in its annual report for 2006 issued in Vienna, Austria.

In the United States alone, the abuse of painkillers, stimulants, tranquillisers and other prescription medications has gone beyond “practically all illicit drugs with the exception of cannabis,” with users increasingly turning to them first, the group said.

Unregulated markets in many countries make it easy for traffickers to peddle a wide variety of counterfeit drugs using courier services, the mail and the Internet.

“Gains over the past years in international drug control may be seriously undermined by this ominous development if it remains unchecked,” Narcotics Control Board President Philip Emafo said.

Discount medications that seem to be authentic often turn out to be powerful knockoffs concocted from recipes posted on the Web, he added.

“Instead of healing, they can take lives,” Mr Emafo said, characterising the danger as “real and sizeable”.

Up to 50% of all drugs taken in developing countries were believed to be counterfeit, the board said, citing estimates from the World Health Organisation.

Buprenorphine, an analgesic, is now the main injection drug in most of India, and it is also trafficked and abused in tablet form in France, where the Narcotics Control Board estimates 20-25% of the drug sold commercially as Subutex is being diverted to the black market.