Could mass closing of pharmacies make fentanyl crisis WORSE? Experts warn environment creating ‘breeding ground’ for counterfeit, laced pills
Experts warn that more people could be exposed to fake pills containing potentially deadly substances due to the mass closure of pharmacies.
Roei Ganzarski, who heads a company that detects counterfeit drugs, said many patients are now forced to fill their prescriptions online.
This created a “breeding ground” for counterfeit pills, he said, as it increased the risk that patients would turn to cheaper third-party websites that would sell pills containing “life-threatening substances.” This includes fentanyl, a drug that kills tens of thousands of Americans every year through accidental overdoses.
Major drugstore chains, including Rite Aid and CVS, are closing more than 1,500 locations across the U.S., mostly in low-income and rural neighborhoods, leaving millions of Americans in “pharmacy deserts.”
Rite Aid plans to close 150 of its 2,100 U.S. locations after the pharmacy chain filed for bankruptcy earlier this month (pictured shows a Rite Aid store in California before closing)
This was said by Mr Ganzarski, who heads the Washington-based health technology company Alitheon Fox news: ‘When you go digital, you just don’t know who you’re ordering from or what you’re actually getting – and yet you put it in your body.’
Roei Ganzarski, who heads a company that detects counterfeit drugs, says many patients are now forced to fill their prescriptions online
“Patients may think, ‘Oh look, I can buy it from this company in Canada or Taiwan and it’ll be cheaper.’
“They may not even know who it is, but yes, it has the name of their drug on it and it’s much cheaper.”
He added: “Bad actors can get their hands on a surplus of old pills that should have been destroyed or thrown away, then change the date and ship them out.
‘(Patients could also be given pills where) there is literally nothing. You just take a pill that’s a placebo, and then you don’t understand why you’re not doing better.’
He said buying from major pharmacies like CVS and Walgreens or local pharmacies online was safe.
But there were concerns about third-party pharmacies not based in the U.S., he said.
Officials are working to remove fraudulent websites, but new ones can easily be set up to sell the drugs.
Data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) shows that the number of overdoses caused by counterfeit pills more than doubled between the third quarter of 2019 and the fourth quarter of 2021, from two percent to 4.7 percent.
America’s overdose death crisis is caused by fentanyl – responsible for eight in 10 deaths – which illicit manufacturers mix into substances to give users a more intense high.
But this drug can be fatal even in small amounts, with many users unaware that their medications contain this substance.
There are now fears that more people could be unknowingly exposed to the drug through counterfeit pills sold in pharmacies, further increasing the overdose death toll.
Rite Aid plans to close 150 of its 2,100 U.S. locations after the pharmacy chain filed for bankruptcy earlier this month.
The company has failed to settle hundreds of lawsuits accusing it of overprescribing opioids and has struggled to keep up with the competition.
CVS will close 900 stores, 10 percent of all stores, by the end of 2024 as part of its online strategy.
And Walgreens is also poised to close 150 stores by summer 2024, citing lower revenues due to declining demand for Covid vaccines and tests.
A slew of drugstore chains that have trimmed their locations have left millions of people living in areas where medications are difficult to come by, areas known as pharmacy deserts, according to JAMA.
“According to our estimates, approximately one in four neighborhoods nationwide are made up of pharmacies,” said Dima Qato, an associate professor at the University of Southern California. WashingtonPost:.
“These closures disproportionately impact communities that need pharmacies most.”
America remains in the grip of an overdose crisis, with more than 10,000 people dying from drug overdoses every month, figures show.
The latest data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) shows that an estimated 112,000 people died from overdose in the year to May 2023, slightly more than the previous month’s estimate.
That was the equivalent of nearly 10,000 deaths a month, which experts warned was crashing and burning like a plane full of Americans almost every day.
The overdose crisis is driven by fentanyl, which is responsible for about eight in 10 overdose deaths. This drug is a hundred times more powerful than morphine, but can be fatal even in very small doses.