THE New Nation reported on Tuesday that the illegal business of producing and selling adulterated medicines is going on unrestricted ignoring mobile court drives and other punitive measures to control the situation. In the last 11 months alone, over six hundred cases have been filed by Director General of Drug Administration (DGDA) against individuals and businesses including some producers for involvement in the illegal drug trade, however without lasting impact.
Illegal drug traders are almost relentlessly producing, storing and selling fictitious drugs even after being fined or serving jail sentences. Companies have to secure licenses from the DGDA to manufacture and sell quality medicine to be produced by qualified manpower in standard environment, but many of them are flouting the rules and conducting drug sales without concern for public health.
It is true that the law enforcers are not sitting idle. But lawbreakers are desperate. Report said six drugstores were fined handsome amount of money this week for selling medicines meant for patients receiving treatment in government hospitals and physicians’ samples. They were also found selling unapproved foreign medicines and harmful food supplements. A fake doctor was fined at Shah Amanat Bridge and another at Bangla Bazar areas in Chittagong city.
Over 350 companies and drug sellers were fined about Tk 30 million during the last 11 months and around 98 individuals were handed down various jail terms from 10 days to two years by the mobile courts for their involvement in the risky trade to human health. But production and sale are at work ceaselessly under the very nose of the drug administration.
It is indeed a highly profiteering trade at the cost of human health because there is a huge market for it at a time when the country’s regulatory standards are not effective in controlling the harmful practice. Everybody knows that powerful ones in the government are involved in every big wrong doings causing sufferings of the people.
Bribing in ones way is the easiest practice to do any wrong. There is disorder and the government has no time or strength to deal with the law breakers. We cannot be sure when the law breakers will bother to accept the government to be feared for their wrongs and face sure punishment.
The government has to allow people not to live in fear of men in power.
