The Taiwan Statebuilding Party and Taiwan Medical Products Anti-Counterfeiting Taskforce (TMPACT) members yesterday called for online social media and commerce platforms to require real-name registration for placing drug advertisements, to prevent counterfeit or illegal drugs from being sold online.
Taiwan Statebuilding Party Tainan City Councilor Lee Chong-lim (李宗霖) said he received a complaint last month saying that many food products and drugs that are not authorized by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) can be easily bought from China through Shopee (樂購蝦皮), a popular e-commerce platform.
Investigating the matter, Lee said he found that he could easily place orders online and receive the items in about 10 days, and that some of the packages are printed with simplified Chinese characters, adding that some are imported by Taiwanese for resale, while others are delivered directly from China.
Photo: Wang Yi-sung, Taipei Times
He said the drugs imported from China do not have an FDA drug license number, so they are considered illegal according to the Pharmaceutical Affairs Act (藥事法), and that people found manufacturing or importing counterfeit or illegal drugs could face a heavy penalty or imprisonment under the same act, but despite this, the drugs are flagrantly being advertised and sold online.
“If the government cannot take action and show that it is determined to stop these drugs from being sold online, there will not only be food safety issues, but also more harm to people’s health,” he said.
TMPACT member Hsieh Yi-ni (謝宜倪), a pharmacist, said the WHO has warned that counterfeit medicines pose a significant risk to public health worldwide, adding that Taiwan’s Customs Administration seizes more than 50,000 counterfeit products per year, including nearly 28,000 counterfeit drugs.
She said the common types of counterfeit drugs being sold are aphrodisiacs, weight loss drugs and even some claiming to be for cancer treatment.
Advertisements for counterfeit or illegal drugs placed on social media or e-commerce platforms are rampant, Hsieh said, adding that some use ambiguous drug names and imply that they are directly imported from the original pharmaceutical companies, misleading the public.
Sometimes the advertisements even use photographs of pharmacists or pharmaceutical companies to deceive consumers, she said.
The TMPACT calls on online social media and commerce platforms to require real-name registration for placing drug advertisements and bear the liability, urges the government to strengthen its public messaging that drugs cannot be randomly imported and sold online, she said.
The FDA said yesterday that many Web sites pretend to be legal pharmaceutical companies or pharmacists selling drugs online, but are in fact Web sites set up in other countries that deliver drugs from unknown sources.
The FDA, local health departments and the Customs Administration have been cooperating on inspecting drugs sold in the market and submitting international parcels, as well as asking e-commerce or social media platforms to strengthen their management and monitoring of online sales of counterfeit drugs, it said.
When suspected sales of illegal drugs are found, the e-commerce or social media platforms are asked to remove the page, while the local health department is informed to handle the case, and sometimes it would be handed to the police department or prosecutors for further investigation, the FDA said.
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