Pharmacy fraud in Baltimore highlights need for better prescription drug-tracking system

07/07/2010

A Baltimore pharmacist has been sentenced to 57 months in prison for making fraudulent claims and misbranding hundreds of thousands of bottles of drugs from an unlicensed supplier, the FDA Office of Criminal Investigations said last week.  In an inspection during 2008, officials found more than 200,000 bottles of misbranded drugs in Pamela Arrey’s Medicine Shoppe, as well as drugs that had expired, or had altered labels.
 
According to an FDA press release, “Arrey misbranded and relabeled prescription drugs she had purchased in large drums from an unlicensed supplier, for resale in her pharmacies. Arrey admitted that she filled prescription orders for pharmacy customers with misbranded pharmaceuticals, including Metformin, an oral diabetes medication used to help control blood sugar levels, and Gabapentin, an anti-epileptic medication used to treat seizures.”

Misbranding and counterfeiting schemes like Arrey’s—which involved diabetes and anti-seizure medications—highlight the need for a federal electronic track-and-trace system, so that drugs can be traced back to their original source and verified at each transaction point, from production to pharmacy shelf. Congresswoman Rosa Delauro (D-CT), who chairs the House subcommittee on FDA appropriations, called for such a system to be developed in committee’s Chairman’s Mark last week, and federal track and trace legislation has been introduced in previous sessions.

For more on drug safety and the importance of developing a prescription drug tracking system, visit the Pew Prescription Project’s Securing a Safe Drug Supply.