Illegal Pharmaceuticals Trade In India

Introduction

Drugs play a crucial role in saving lives, restoring health, and preventing diseases and epidemics, But they need to be safe, efficacious, good quality, and used rationally . Their production, import/export, storage, supply, and distribution should be subject to government control through prescribed norms and standards of an effective regulatory system. But substandard and counterfeit drugs proliferate primarily in the environment where the drug regulation has proved ineffective. According to the WHO, India accounts for nearly 35 per cent of world's spurious drugs market. It is estimated that 40 per cent of the pharma market in our country, i.e.Rs 8000 crore is under the grip of spurious and black marketed drugs. Not only is the people 's health at stake but also there is a serious loss to the exchequer of both central and state governments as they are deprived of huge amounts on account of sales tax and excise duty. The Indian pharma industry has a domestic turnover of more than Rs.20,000 crore and exports over Rs.10,000 crore. The industry is growing at the rate of over 10 percent for the past one decade and is said to be the fourth in the world in terms of volume. However, a consumer has good reasons to be concerned about the lack of availability of safe and genuine medicines. The problem of spurious and substandard drugs in the country is quite rampant, as is evident from periodic reports in the media on seizures and confiscation of fake drugs from large consignments or godowns. These, however, would constitute only a small fraction of the real extent of the illegal activity, which perhaps is no different from the extent of counterfeit trade in other commercial products.

Analysis

India too is caught in this vicious circle of drug abuse, and the numbers of drug addicts are increasing day by day. According to a UN report, One million heroin addicts are registered in India, and unofficially there are as many as five million. What started off as casual use among a minuscule population of high-income group youth in the metro has permeated to all sections of society. Inhalation of heroin alone has given way to intravenous drug use, that too in combination with other sedatives and painkillers. This has increased the intensity of the effect, hastened the process of addiction and complicated the process of recovery. Cannabis, heroin, and Indian-produced pharmaceutical drugs are the most frequently abused drugs in India. Cannabis products, often called charas, bhang, or ganja, are abused throughout the country because it has attained some amount of religious sanctity because of its association with some Hindu deities. The International Narcotics Control Board in its 2002 report released in Vienna pointed out that in India persons addicted to opiates are shifting their drug of choice from opium to heroin. The pharmaceutical products containing narcotic drugs are also increasingly being abused. The intravenous injections of analgesics like dextropropoxphene etc are also reported from many states, as it is easily available at ...