Spurious drugs flood Punjab markets

Dozens of unapproved and unregistered medicines still available in market

LAHORE: Despite the launch of a crackdown against spurious drugs, dozens of unapproved and unregistered medicines of different categories including aphrodisiac, allopathic and herbal were still available in markets while the pharmaceutical companies have no online data of drug prices for consumers.

Sources associated with the manufacturing of medicines revealed that mostly such brands belonged to aphrodisiac medicines which were smuggled from different countries. At least over 16 brands of such medicines including Viagra, Black Cobra and many other such brands were available in markets and being sold without any check and balance. While a big market of Rs5.50 billion belonged to aphrodisiac drugs in which Rs4 billion medicines were smuggled into the country without paying any tax.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 27^th, 2019.