Sounds believable, like a good lie should

Last week the Partnership for Safe Medicines — an entity funded largely by drugmakers and which, for reasons that elude me, is supported by many state pharmacy associations — released a report claiming to show “illegal ingredients for knockoff weight loss drugs flooding into the US from foreign sources.”

The report (basically a couple of spreadsheets listing shipments of illegal substances) makes quite a leap when it asserts, without evidence, that those drugs were “bound for use in compounded products.” There’s no evidence – zero – that any legitimate, state-licensed pharmacies were using them, but PSM seems happy to muddy the waters between counterfeit and compounded.

It’s astonishing (if clumsy) propaganda and easily debunked, as I do in this annotated version of the news release (I think it’s worth your time, but then I’m the one who annotated it). My real concern, though, is that policymakers and others may not know better. It sounds believable, like any good lie should.

Clearly it’s misinformation that works: Last week, a bunch of state attorneys general wrote a letter urging FDA to do more to address counterfeit GLP-1s (we agree on that much) but also asking the agency to “increase enforcement actions against compounding pharmacies illegally participating in this market.” The implication, of course, is that state-licensed pharmacies are “participating” in those counterfeit markets. Again, PSM offers no evidence that such a thing is occurring; it just, you know, sort of insinuates.

Why am I going on about this? In part because your state pharmacy association may be lending its name to this group — a group that is willfully smearing your compounding practice. And also because we want you armed to push back if your elected officials or board of pharmacy pick up on the false claims in this latest PSM “report.”

APC is all for safe medicines, and we’re very much for fighting drug counterfeiting. What we’re opposed to is deliberate and blatant efforts to misrepresent compounding from drug companies that still haven’t gotten the message: We are not their competition.

— Scott

Scott Brunner, CAE, is our opinionated CEO. You can reach him at scott@a4pc.org.