Written by: Emily Joswiak • February 23, 2023• Lifestyle

Counterfeit Medicines: How To Identify Them and What To Do

If there’s one thing you always want to confirm, it’s the authenticity of your pills. We’ll show you how to identify counterfeit medicines and more here.

The rise of online pharmacies has made buying pills and tablets much easier, but it’s also led to many fake online pharmacies and fraudulent medicines. Learn how to identify counterfeit medicines and what to do if you encounter them.

Identifying Counterfeit Pills and Tablets

Whenever purchasing pills or tablets, it’s wise to check their validity each time. This is especially true if you’re buying from a new pharmacy, have a new prescription, or are buying medicine abroad. You want to confirm that you’re getting the right, legitimate medicine.

There are a few ways to identify counterfeit medicines, but the best methods are to check the pharmacy and the pill/tablet’s imprint code.

Check Pharmacy Credentials

If you find you’ve gotten counterfeit medicine, it’s likely because the pharmacy itself is fraudulent and trying to scam patients out of money. If you’re buying from a brick-and-mortar pharmacy, you should be fine—the real concern is when buying medicine online.

Some patients have successfully saved money by buying from an online pharmacy, but the internet is rife with scammers, so there are some warning signs that patients should watch out for. If the pharmacy doesn’t require a doctor’s prescription, doesn’t have a licensed pharmacist on hand to answer questions, or offers a significantly lower price for the same medicine, those are red flags that the pharmacy could be fake.

Check the Imprint Code

Another way that patients can learn how to identify counterfeit medicines is by examining the imprint code. The pharmaceutical imprint code is a series of numbers, letters, and symbols printed on all US FDA-approved pills and tablets and recorded in an online FDA database.

The pharmaceutical imprint code is important because it allows anyone to look up their pills and tablets to confirm their legitimacy. Patients can search for the medicine they should be getting on the FDA’s database and compare it with the medicine they have or look up the imprint code on their medicine and confirm that it’s in the FDA’s data. If the imprint code on a pill/tablet doesn’t match the FDA’s database, that’s a clear sign of counterfeit drugs.

What To Do When You Find Counterfeit Pills and Tablets

If you find that the pills or tablets you’ve bought are fake, do not take them—they’re not FDA-approved and could be unsafe for consumption. Patients can call the drug manufacturer and inform them that they bought a counterfeit drug from a pharmacy—drug manufacturers keep records of all their batches, and they’ll be able to confirm that the drugs are fake.

Patients can also report their findings to the FDA via the FDA’s MedWatch program of the FDA’s Office of Criminal Investigations. If you find fraudulent medicines, you should report them immediately to prevent anyone else from being scammed and possibly harming themselves with unsafe drugs.

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Last modified: February 23, 2023