Dramatic Rise in Drug Seizures by EU Customs

SecuringPharma.com posted a story by Phil Taylor on July 24th, outlining and giving background on an astounding increase in drug seizures by EU Customs Officials.

Some interesting tidbits include:

• Seizures of pharmaceutical products at the European Union’s borders rose 57 per cent last year, while the total number of items detained more than doubled to around 8m items.


• That increase came against a backdrop of a 13 per cent hike across all product categories to nearly 50,000 seizures overall, with the number of detained articles swelling to 180m from 80m in 2007.The report notes that seizures of medicines were among the most controversial developments in 2008.


• There were cases in which generic medicines destined for a developing nation being seized in transit at EU borders, even though they did not infringe intellectual property rights in their destination markets (such as Latin America and Africa).


• Around 70 per cent of all seizures were carried out at the request of an intellectual property rights holder, with the remainder ex officio actions by customs officials where there was a suspicion of infringement.

To read the story visit SecuringPharma.com at the following link: http://www.securingpharma.com/40/articles/184.php