Parallel-o-gram

According to the Financial Times:

“Drug distributors who arbitrage the price differences across the European Union could see their €4bn ($5.5bn) a year trade severely curtailed under proposed legislation set to be unveiled by the European Commission later this month. A document obtained by the FT includes rules to crack down on the trade in counterfeit medicines that would make it difficult for wholesalers legally to move pharmaceuticals across the EU's open borders. New rules would put tight restrictions on the repackaging of medicines, a process required to ensure the correct language and coding information is used on packaging and information leaflets.”

“The repackaging controls, drafted for Günther Verheugen, EU trade and industry commissioner, as part of broader reforms to laws governing the pharmaceutical sector, have been justified as a way to reduce the threat of counterfeit medicines, which the pharmaceutical industry says is a growing danger to patients' health.”

On the other side of the issue, Heinz Kobelt, secretary-general of the European Association of Euro-Pharmaceutical Companies, which represents parallel traders, said the Commission had been unable to provide any evidence that parallel traders had allowed counterfeit prescription medicines to enter the pharmacy chain.

Heinz has a very selective memory.

Earlier this year, at a London policy conference on parallel trade (where we both spoke), Heinz pointed out (correctly) that the recent spate of counterfeit drugs that had infiltrated legitimate UK pharmacies had been discovered by a parallel trader. And that’s true. But what he didn’t mention (and seems to have again conveniently forgotten) is that those same products had already passed through three other parallel traders without being found.

Oops.