Up To 10 Year Imprisonment For Drug Counterfeiters In Peru

Most of the world’s legal prescription-drug supply is getting infused with fake medicine. The adulterated drug stock can be a catastrophe for patients battling for life.

A recent bill passed by the Congressional Health Commission in Peru declares that anyone found selling, storing, packaging or producing adulterated & faulty medicine will be imprisoned for up to 10 years. The strict laws come to Peru after many nations adopted the scanning policy.

The proposal of the bill is to amend many articles in Peru’s penal code to bring the crime and people associated with it under scanner.

Drug counterfeiters have always found the situations favorable. Weak laws & regulations, easy access to fake pill-making, packaging and printing technology, rising drug prices, porous supply chains full of peddlers has helped this menace expand over years. From lifesaving medicines to regular drugs, counterfeiting has spread everywhere.

Drug Importation poses big risk for consumers because not always does the medicine travel through secured distribution corridors. FDA’s investigations of counterfeit medicine increased ten fold in last few years. Fake drugs have populated the pharmacies and hospital shelves. Their origins are hard to trace. Many nations have fallen prey to drug counterfeiting.

According to the bill, if a pharmacy or a person is caught selling inappropriate pharmaceutical products which are not the right quality or quantity as on the customer's prescription, the sentence will be between 3-6 years in prison.

If the drug sold causes any harm including death, then the sentence could be between 6-10 years in prison.

Reports by the Congressional Health Commission claims that near about, 30 percent of the medicine sold in Peru is adulterated.

"This bill has been passed with these figures in mind," said Daniel Robles, president of Peru’s Congressional Health Commission.