Stop spurious drugs

Some suffixes are popular in India: tainted, spurious or fake. Telgi sold fake stamp papers worth Rs2189 crore.

His crime carried out in connivance with politicians, police officers and revenue officials across the country did not kill any one except that it made the exchequer less nourished.

It is now known how many ailing people are being killed daily after consuming spurious drugs in India.

Neither do we known if any one selling the lethal stuff has been convicted for committing the crime that is not considered a serious offence.

Tainted, we all know, is used for bureaucrats and politicians, who are facing criminal charges such as murders, corruption or human trafficking.

A random search of the legislature and judicial sites don't offer any concrete information about the people who have been arrested, tried and convicted for selling the poisonous drugs or medicines.

According to the Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry of India (ASSOCHAM), 60 per cent of drugs are without any active ingredient, 19 per cent have wrong ingredients and 16 per cent have harmful and inappropriate properties such as talcum powder.

The indigenous spurious medicines market has grown to Rs40 billion from an estimated Rs30 billion in 2005 as 20 per cent of fake medicines are sold across India.

In its study, "Counterfeits, Spurious & Contraband Goods: Preventive & Remedial Issues", ASSOCHAM says impoverished government hospitals procure about 38 per cent of the spurious medicines.

India's spurious drug industry sells 35 per cent per cent of its produce worldwide, it says

The Centre, however, is silent. Like law and order, health is also a state subject. But it recently admitted that WHO was non-committal on ASSOCHAM's findings.

The same way it does not dispute the revelation made by Transparency International that Indians pay Rs2, 1608 crore in bribe annually.  

Before its ouster in 2004, the then NDA government had introduced a law with a provision of death sentence for a person who is guilty of manufacturing, marketing or selling spurious drugs.

Whether the extreme penalty is desirable or not is open for debate, but the then firebrand Union health minister, Sushma Swaraj's concern for the issue seemed to be genuine.

The proposed legislation died with the exit of the Vajpayee government. The UPA government is armed with a minister who is a doctor by profession.

But, the present government has not shown any seriousness in enacting a stringent law or amending the enactment that is meant for cosmetics etc but is also supposed to deal with the drug mafia.

In China, Zhang's subordinate Cao Wenzhuang was sentenced to death for accepting $307,000 in bribe from two medical companies. Four other drug supervision officials were also sentenced to life imprisonment.

But back home, police have termed the mushrooming spurious drug trade as cheating. That's evident from some of the FIRs filed.