Anticounterfeiting And NIR: A Hong Kong Diary

We recalled an episode the previous day, when an enthusiastic pharmacist had tried to sell us an expensive bottle of Viagra, at HK$2400. Not having sufficient cash, we wavered and finally left. He chased us out the door, offering lower and lower prices. We resolved to try to find that shop again. We went back to the Yau Ma Tei tourist area of Kowloon, and used the paper that was now annotated with our Sham Shui Po pharmacist’s prices.

In the first few dispensaries, the prices varied little and the products looked consistent, so we thanked the proprietors but did not buy much. We did watch, mesmerized, as one used a hair dryer and plastic wrap to shrink-wrap packages. Many of the Western products we saw had stickers on them. Some were logos, with or without holograms. Some carried printed information that covered up different printed information. A few of the boxes were shrink-wrapped, although we couldn’t tell whether that was homegrown or not.

At last we found the over-eager Viagra seller. He was happy to see us: we were big spenders. He had Cialis, too, a big shrink-wrapped set of little white and green 4-pack boxes of 20mg pills. Since I already had one from another pharmacy, and since they all looked the same, I asked for a different container size. He pulled out a silver box with a 50mg dose. I didn’t remember Lilly making a 50mg dose, so I examined it carefully.

It said Tadalafil in big letters and Cialis in little letters – unlike any American drug I’d ever seen, the generic name was bigger than the brand name. It had a nice Lilly hologram sticker on it, but on the other side of the box, the name was, in the right red loopy script, Lieel, not Lilly. Trying to sound casual, I started to bargain. We added the Viagra bottle back in, also at a discount. It looked dingy instead of bright white, and was missing its box, but it didn’t provide any obvious red flags.

Hong Kong has cracked down on counterfeit pharmaceuticals, and many people told me the situation there was now much better, “not like China.” But there are clearly fakes in the marketplace, along with diverted perfume in little bottles marked “Sample, Not to be Sold,” and Thai-labeled Colgate toothpaste in a flavor I’m not sure Colgate actually makes. These are not being sold in stalls in street markets, but in stores, some of them chain stores, in the center of the city. Caveat emptor, or “let the buyer beware,” as the ancient Romans said. But these days, not just the buyer but the manufacturer, must be vigilant.

References

Dubois, Janie, Jean-Claude Wolff, John K. Warrack, Joseph Schoppelrei and E. Neil Lewis, “NIR Chemical Imaging for Counterfeit Pharmaceutical Products Analysis,” Spectroscopy, Feb. 1, 2007.

FDA Counterfeit Drug Task Force Report, June 2006, http://www.fda.gov/oc/initiatives/ counterfeit/report6_06.html

“FDA Warns Consumers about Counterfeit Drugs from Multiple Internet Sellers,” May 2007: http://www.fda.gov/bbs/topics/ NEWS/2007/NEW01623.html

Polli, J.E. and Hoag, S.W. (2004): Near-Infrared Technology Detects Counterfeit Drugs. US Pharmacist Feb:104-6.

Scafi, S.H.F. and Pasquini, C., Identification of counterfeit drugs using near-infrared spectroscopy, Analyst, 2001, 126, 2218-2224. Scalet, Sarah D. (2007): Radio-Frequency ID (RFID) as an Answer to Pharmaceutical Drug Counterfeiting: Five myths about how Radio-Frequency ID (RFID) technology will stop counterfeit drugs. CIO Magazine, 5/11/07.

Yoon, W.L., Jee, R.D., Charvill, A., Lee, G. and Mo at, A.C., Application of nearinfrared spectroscopy to the determination of the sites of manufacture of proprietary products, J. Biomed. Pharm. Analysis, 2004, 34, 933-944.

Yoon, W. L. “Near-Infrared Spectroscopy: A Novel Tool to Detect Pharmaceutical Counterfeits,” available from Beecham Pharmaceutical Technologies Service, http://www.bpts-pharm.com/gw02.htm.