Counterfeit drug scourge a national crisis. Time to treat it that way
Fox News
Counterfeit drugs threaten millions of Americans. Made to look like legitimate prescription drugs, these fake pills are frequently laced with potentially fatal doses of fentanyl.
William Barr, who served as U.S. attorney general, 1991-93 and 2019-20, is a distinguished fellow at the Hudson Institute. His recent memoir, "One Damn Thing After Another," was a New York Times #1 bestseller.
Drug overdose deaths continue to climb, standing at 109,000 last year – with 70% of the deaths attributable to fentanyl. The same sad, familiar story is repeated hundreds of times a day in local news around the country: a college student unwittingly takes a phony Xanax pill and never wakes up; a high schooler takes what looks like an Adderall and falls into a coma; and on and on it goes.
These pills from Mexico are an acute aspect of the broader challenge posed generally by counterfeit drugs. On a massive scale around the world, fraudsters and criminal organizations are counterfeiting a wide array of prescriptions medicines, running the gamut from common painkillers, antibiotics and antimalarial and antiretroviral drugs up to the most sophisticated cancer treatments.