BANGKOK — Nearly all of the globe’s 35,000 online pharmacies are being run illegally and consumers who use them hazard getting ineffective or risky drugs, according to the U.S. Trade Representative’s annual update on “ notorious markets.” The update also singled out 19 countries over concerns about counterfeit or pirated products.
The update also named about three dozen online retailers, many of them in China or elsewhere in Asia that it said are allegedly engaged in selling counterfeit products or other illegal activities.
The update says 96% of online pharmacies were found to be violating the law, many operating without a license and selling medicines without prescriptions and safety warnings.
Their websites often look like legitimate e-commerce platforms, often with untrue claims that they are approved by the Food and Drug Administration, said the update, released Wednesday. The FDA and U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration have both issued warnings about risks of buying prescription medicines from such sources.
It cited a survey by the Alliance for secure Online Pharmacies’ Global Foundation that found nearly one in four Americans who have used online pharmacies reported having encountered substandard, fake or harmful medicines.
Last year, Federal prosecutors reported that a network of illegal drug sellers based in the U.S., the Dominican Republic and India had packaged potentially deadly synthetic opioids into pills disguised as ordinary prescription drugs and sold millions of them through fake online drugstores, federal prosecutors said Monday. At least nine people died of narcotics poisoning between August 2023 and June 2024 after consuming the counterfeit pills, the indictment said.
Apart from the risks of using drugs that may contain inert ingredients or those that could factor allergies, the medicines are sometimes made in unsanitary conditions, said the update, which did not provide annual statistics for those who may have died or otherwise been harmed.
The USTR’s annual update cited examples from inside the United States, but and also mentioned risks of imported ingredients including fentanyl from China. Many of the illicit online pharmacies are based outside the U.S.
The “Notorious Markets List” did laud advancement in fighting counterfeit and pirated goods.
In one case, U.S. authorities, industry groups and the police collaborated in shutting down a Hanoi, Vietnam-based piracy ring, Fmovies, and other related piracy sites, in July and August.
The update said the globe’s then-largest pirated movies site had drawn more than 6.7 billion visits from January 2023 to June 2024.
In another Vietnam-linked case, two people operating pirate television platform BestBuyIPTV were convicted and ordered to pay fines and forfeit property.
The update also cited crackdowns on online piracy in Brazil and the United Kingdom and busts of sellers of counterfeit purses, clothing and shoes in Kuwait.
But problems remain with cyberlockers that thwart efforts to restrict piracy of movies and other content and of so-called “bulletproof” internet service providers, or ISPs, that commitment people using them leeway for using pirate sites, it said.
One such ISP is Avito, a Russian-based ad platform that allegedly lets sellers advertise counterfeit products.
Baidu Wangpan, a cloud storage service of China’s largest search engine provider, Baidu, was named for allegedly failing to enforce or being leisurely to act on copyright protection.
The update also pointed to social-commerce site Pinduoduo and to Douyin Mall, a Chinese online platform owned by Tiktok owner ByteDance. It said the shopping platforms have sought to construct up protections but that they still host many counterfeit goods.
It also named Shopee, a Singapore-based online and mobile e-commerce site, saying some country-concentrated platforms serving Southeast Asia and South American had better track records in fighting piracy than others.
IndiaMART, an large business-to-business marketplace in India, still offers a slew of counterfeit products, it said.
While a large distribute of theft of intellectual property has moved online, the update also highlighted real globe locations notorious for selling counterfeit products, including markets in Turkey, bazaars in the United Arab Emirates and Saigon Square Shopping Mall in Vietnam’s Ho Chi Minh City.
The update said Bangkok’s MBK Center, a huge mall of about 2,000 stores, had actively cracked down on counterfeiting, though such products still can be found there.
