Telangana DCA launches special drive to curb the menace

According to the DCA, spurious drugs are manufactured by rogue companies and syndicates to deceive the public into buying a drug resembling a branded drug.

Hyderabad: During its special drive to check whether the drugs sold at pharmacies meet the standards, the Drug Control Administration (DCA) has found that spurious drugs are flooding the market.

According to the DCA, spurious drugs are manufactured by rogue companies and syndicates to deceive the public into buying a drug resembling a branded drug. Spurious drugs contain no active ingredient, have the wrong active ingredient, or wrong amount of the correct active ingredient. Some spurious drugs have been toxic with either fatal levels of the wrong ingredient or other toxic chemicals.

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“Such drugs place a person’s health at grave risk. They do not cure the disease but over time, create disastrous consequences for the patient,” DCA Director General V B Kamalasan Reddy said.

During investigations, the DCA officials found such drugs are sourced by the distributors or directly the pharmacy owners from Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh, and others.

“The spurious drugs are supplied to the local traders here by the courier. The trade is highly lucrative given the high profit margins. The customers are lured into buying the counterfeit drug by pharmacies through huge discounts of up to 50 per cent,” he said.

Kamalasan Reddy said the officers were working overtime to detect spurious drugs in the market. “Our people pick up random drug samples from medical stores and send them to the laboratory. Wherever we find the medicine is counterfeit, a case is booked and further investigation carried out and the guilty face prosecution,” he said.

Vigil on chemical factories

The Drug Control Administration, Telangana, intensified its vigil on facilities and chemical factories in the State to detect the manufacturing of narcotic drugs, psychotropic substances, and other drugs. V B Kamalasan Reddy, Director General, Drug Control Administration (DCA), said since October last year, surprise checks and raids were carried out at unlicensed drugs manufacturing facilities and Alprazolam and Tramadol were seized in large quantities. In a raid conducted at Chotuppal mandal of Yadadri Bhuvanigiri, ‘Tizanidine Hydrochloride’ worth Rs 66 lakh was seized. In Sangareddy district, the officials seized ‘Dapoxetine Hydrochloride’ worth Rs 20 lakh and 236 kg of ‘Diacerein’ worth Rs 50 lakh.