A study of regulations combating counterfeit medicines across India, USA, and Europe

Abstract

Counterfeiting is the deliberate and fraudulent production of products including mislabeling in attempts to deliberately morph its identity and source for making its appearance as genuine and as it is concerning the original product. Counterfeit medicines are pharmaceutical medicinal products without anyActive pharmaceutical ingredient (API), substandard quality API, or a fraction of the original amount of API stated as a different API, cross-contaminated API, and expiry products that are repacked including formulations done incorrectly and produced in substandard conditions. Expensive drug's extensive demand like steroids, antibiotics, cancer-treating drugs, vaccines, antivirals, and antihistamines are targets for counterfeiting. Patients deceived into buying counterfeit drugs are people seeking to buy discounted medications and involved in inappropriate usage. With identical labels as well as nearly resemblance to originals, these counterfeits are cheaper to make. Counterfeit medicines kill and threaten the lives of abused patients, fooled by false appearances. Medicines and health-care items are different from other commodities, and their fakes are different from other fakes. They are deceived by misleading characteristics and harm and risk the lives of several mistreated victims daily. This variety of terms and definitions, which might differ from one nation to the next, leads to a lack of awareness of the issue on a worldwide scale. The European Union's mainly prefers the term “counterfeiting,” lately the phrase “falsification” even if the US uses the phrase “false” or “fake” more. We must comprehend the phrase “medicine” and its meanings to define the many terminologies used to describe counterfeiting.