Abstract
Fake products are thriving, thanks to consumers’ reluctance to pay top prices for designer goods. Too bad that that attitude extends to drugs, says a documentary reviewed by Ike Iheanacho
Britain loves a bargain. Our modern icons include the pound shop and the booze cruise, telling symbols of the urge to seek something for almost nothing. This attitude cannot be wholly due to innate thrift or absolute poverty. After all, the nation still has one of the world’s biggest economies. And it currently enjoys (if that’s the right word) record levels of personal debt, not least because of spending on luxury items.
Yes, like the rest of the world, we want the right brands. But it’s nice not to have to pay too much for them. And if the overdraft will not stretch to those must-have clothes or gadgets, then maybe decent replicas will do. After all, it’s the look and the labels that will impress other people, and if these can be had for a rock bottom price, what is wrong with that?
Almost everything, concludes The Fake Trade, a two part documentary about global counterfeiting, including, worryingly, fake drugs. The naive and self justifying view that counterfeiting is a crime without victims breaks down in the case of healthcare products. The dangers inherent in fake treatments make a nonsense of any notion of cosy collusion between a knowing consumer and a helpful supplier.
The documentary offered grim data on the counterfeiting of drugs. Mention was made of research indicating that 10% of drugs in Russia were fake. We also heard that, at the end of the 20th century, an estimated 40% of drugs in the city of Lagos, Nigeria, were counterfeit. It’s hardly surprising, therefore, that the World Health Organization estimates that each year a million Africans die from malaria, mainly as a result of fake antimalarials.
The documentary struck gold in its choice of interviewees about such issues. There was, for instance, the former president of the Nigerian Medical Association, who had developed extremely high blood pressure, became comatose, and was hospitalised for three months, through unwittingly taking fakes of his usual treatment. He commended the work of Nigeria’s National Agency for Food, Drug Administration and Control in tackling counterfeiters but added that its efforts were a drop in the ocean, given the scale of the problem.
Such pessimism was echoed even by the agency’s highly impressive director general. Her brave leadership has seen seizures of fake drugs worth some $350m (£175m; €230m) since 2001. Yet, commenting on the damage done by fake drugs, she doubted whether “there is any Nigerian family that has no story to tell.” This included her own—her sister having died as the result of receiving counterfeit insulin.
We shouldn’t assume we’re safe in Britain. As an expert on anti-counterfeiting pointed out, each of the few identifications of fake drugs in pharmacies here (nine incidents in the past four years) is likely to signal a huge importation (closer to 900 000 than nine incidents, in his view). This testimony was particularly unsettling given his on-camera demonstration of how the best fakes could elude the sharpest of regulatory eyes.
Drugs are just one of many groups of counterfeited goods, and the two programmes took care to explain why and how faking has thrived. Ironically, manufacturers of big brands have been unsuspecting promoters of the networks that so profitably mimic their products. The key to understanding this is the way that manufacturers embraced outsourcing of operations, in particular to east Asia. The first part of The Fake Trade described how China was a dream destination for outsourcers. The country’s abundant, comparatively cheap, and increasingly skilled workforce, together with its drive to self improvement, made moving there an inevitable step for many companies trying to establish or maintain commercial competitiveness.
However, outsourcing has had malign consequences for the companies and brands concerned. China has a long tradition of producing copies of items of Western origin to sell to the tourist market. The same creative and entrepreneurial energy, coupled with direct access to the designs for branded goods, has also spawned parallel development of businesses that produce and distribute convincing fakes on an industrial scale.
The masterminds of international counterfeiting have proved hard to pin down but nevertheless run extensive syndicates as sophisticated and well organised as the companies they rip off. Some also practise a grisly form of reverse outsourcing. This involves avoiding the hassles inherent in exporting their fake products. Instead, they traffic illegal immigrants to set up counterfeiting operations in other countries. These people then have to make enough money to pay back those who smuggled them. And, naturally, the foot soldiers are the ones who are likely to get caught, not the powerful bosses.
Anyone tempted just to blame China for all this (rather than more complex inter-relationships between consumers, brand producers, and the fakers) would do well to note how that country suffers too: the Beijing government has attributed 190 000 deaths in the country directly to counterfeit drugs, for example.
The Fake Trade has opened up a secret but horribly successful industry. One anti-counterfeiting investigator interviewed in the documentary called the faking business “the dark side of globalisation.” That’s far too cheerful a description.
Each of the few identifications of fake drugs in pharmacies in Britain (nine incidents in the past four years) is likely to signal a huge importation
The Fake Trade
Channel 4, 3 March and 10 March