British Pharma

[ABPI_]

This started off as a small investigation into the availability of the wholesale supply of illegal prescription drugs from government license holding companies such as Teva, Actavis, Almus, Wockhardt and Crescent. I was curious about the availability of the seemingly endless supply of Diazepam, Zopiclone, DHC, Tramadol and other drugs that has flooded the UK market from these companies in their original packaging straight from the factory, it is clear that the odd pharmacy break in in could not supply the thousands of boxes of these products that are sold weekly.

Anyway im just a man with an habit for all things that make you buzz so please don’t take this as an article..

All the boxes of drugs supplied are the ones that the pharmacys are receiving in the UK, though they are received pre-pharmacy with no prescription sticker applied. These are no indian fakes, a simple scan of these barcodes brings up their unique ID and information about the product.

NSFW:

Police wales recently did a bit of “digging” after noting a rise in the availability of Crescent Diazepam;

Thousands of “stolen” Diazepam.

http://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/wales-news/warning-thousands-stolen-diazepam-flood-9863829

“They could well have come from a break in, there are always pharmacies being broken into, certainly if there was no label,” the Gwynedd medic said.
“It might even be stolen from the wholesaler.”

However..

Gwent Police, North Wales Police and Dyfed Powys Police said they were not aware of a Diazepam theft having been reported to them. A source at Hampshire-based manufacturers Crescent Pharma said it was “disappointing” to hear the pills were being sold illegally. At the time of writing the firm had not commented on where the drugs could have come from.

A silver lining?

“It’s not good, but in some ways it is better than people taking unregulated drugs,” Mr Blakebrough said.

Police Scotland also has their say.

Thanks to PC Scott Fortune of ‘G’ Division for the following images of yellow colour 5 milligram Crescent Pharma diazepam tablets in their blister packaging. There has been a marked increase in the availability of 5 mg diazepam tablets in this and other blister packaging form and it is assessed theft at the production / distribution stage is a factor.

http://www.badp.scot.nhs.uk/__data/...sue-5-Police-Scotland-Drug-Trend-Bulletin.pdf

Potential Fakes?

There is a lot of speculation on various forums that all these sought after drugs are mere fakes, its begs the question though why would someone go to the effort of mass producing unique boxes of medication, fitted with pamphlet, scanned barcode, blistered, raised brail and exact 1:1 copy of a medication, and at the same time containing the actual medication, it makes absolutely no sense and I thinks its clear these legitimate producers are not regulated as much as everyone would like to think.

I am not one to complain anyway about the availability of these products on the black market it was just of some interest to me whilst under the influence of such product. I thought I would like to try and find out the actual cost of these products before they hit the black market anyway.

With a bit of investigation I found a handy little website linked to the NHS, it seems to be a user guide on how to use the systems that are used in GPs etc when supplying a prescription.

RxWeb - Background Information RxWeb is a unique, internet based pharmacy management system which has been accredited for the Electronic Prescriptions Service (EPS) by the Health and Social Care Information Centre (HSCIC) formally NHS Connecting for Health. It offers pharmacists a tool for engaging with the new NHS requirements for processing and dispensing medication. The unique web environment provides many benefits to pharmacists wishing to use a modern Patient Medication Record (PMR) system. Your data is securely stored on our servers, centrally backed up and constantly reviewed to improve features and ease of use.

So moving swiftly on, all these documents are available at a Google search, so nothing intrusive here, the following is a few screenshots of the user guide that I guess is presented to GPs and a like..

You can see the full link to both of these if you’re interested about what goes on with all the clicky clicky in front of you.

http://www.helixhealth.co.uk/_fileupload/RxWeb/RxWeb Databases Guide.pdf
http://www.helixhealth.co.uk/_fileupload/RxWeb/RxWeb - Quick User Guide.pdf

One of the interesting steps is the final image.

It shows that the system pulls a price list from the database from this address http://216.122.144.54/cgi-bin/drugcgic/START (Feel free to visit and take a look at the price of some of your favourite drugs).

As an example the below shows the current price for Diazepam that would be pulled from the system.

(I know, I know, obviously there are far higher costs of life saving drugs that we simply could not afford if it were not for the NHS, so I think it evens itself out in the end, god bless the NHS)

It’s interesting to use the database though to get a cost on the price of your drugs, have a play with the search engine and have a little total cost of what your costing the NHS.

http://216.122.144.54/cgi-bin/drugcgic/START

Simply type in the brand name of a drug, or the chemical name and a large list should appear, once clicking ingredients and prices should appear along with manufacturer etc.

http://216.122.144.54/cgi-bin/drugcgic/START

ZOPICLONE> http://216.122.144.54/cgi-bin/drugcgic/DRUG?671776896+0

OXYCODONE> http://216.122.144.54/cgi-bin/drugcgic/DRUG?683340096+0

Etc, etc,

Anyway it was all just a bit of fun on my behalf whilst I had a few hours free and bored, feel free to contribute/annihilate me in the comments for my poor attempt at some research.

 

[Tangerine Dream]

Interesting stuff!

http://216.122.144.54/cgi-bin/drugcgic/DRUG?684412416+0 <- Pregabalin (about £64 for 300mg caps)

It will be interesting to see how much the price comes down some time this year:

From wiki: "Generic versions of pregabalin became available in Russia in 2011,[50] in Canada in 2013, and are expected to become available in the European Union and the U.S. in 2016 and 2018 respectively.[51]"

 

[ABPI_]

Every seller I have spoken with are adamant that the batches which are becoming available from Teva, Actavis and Crescent etc are coming directly from the source, I don't think its beyond silly to imagine one could set up a business to buy from these pharma companies, I doubt they only supply directly to the government.

I remember when they changed the laws in the UK for driving on benzos, and almost the week after the next batch was out with amended leaflets and boxes, its only that which made me skeptical that they are faked in a far away country with the turn around being so fast.

 

[Sprout]

Wait... this isn't common knowledge?!
Large scale diversion is the source of 99.9% of the pharms at street level and always will be. A group offering more than they could be sold to NHS for is simply inevitable business.

But the cost bit in the OP is a little misguided. Take a look at the correlation between intentionally obliterating cuts to funding and rises in the prescription charge.
That charge really has almost zero to do with the value of pharmaceuticals, rather it's pretty much the only thing the NHS can control in order to balance their budget.

I once knew a doctor (well, admittedly he was a consultant in orthapaedics and had management roles) who blamed the fiscal fiasco on the bloated wages of those at the top level.
I don't know if the irony of his £250,000 salary plus £50,000-100,000 average bonus was lost on him or that the system is corrupt enough for his comment to be accurate....

 

[Sprout]

Any views, Stee or other medical staff?

 

[DS_]

Really good thread however I really do think they're just exceptional fakes. I don't find them very strong at all.

 

[BigG]

In between uni degrees i worked fo GD Searle (now bought out by Pizer) and when i was there in '97 they invested billions in cox2 inhibitors for arthritis (rofecoxib being most well know). All clinical trials perfect until it was withdrawn a few years later for causing numerous cardiac related deaths.......im not a big fan of big pharma (the work canteen was awsome though)

 

[Wilson Wilson]

Very interesting thread OP, especially that GP database being completely open to the public, definitely adding that one to the favourites.

I have no doubt many of the products found on the street are real. They look and feel (when consumed) identical to what you get out the pharmacy. Many are Indian imports too, especially drugs under patent in the UK like Viagra and drugs not prescribed on the NHS like alprazolam, but benzos in general are almost always UK stock.

If the source is the pharma companies themselves that does lead me to wonder why we don't see more stronger opiates on the streets through. I see plenty of codeine (so easy to get OTC anyway) and the odd bit of tramadol going around but I never see oxy or morphine for example. I wonder why we don't get those flooding the streets. We know how addictive they are and they'd easily fetch a high price. I've heard of dodgy pharmacies selling single bottles of Oramorph for £200!

In my humble opinion it's more likely crooked pharmacists are the primary source of street pharmas. I've got one near me who sells me as much codeine linctus as I fucking want without asking me a single question. They turn a blind eye even if I come in daily for it. It's not a stretch for me to believe there's some of these people running their little shops who realise they have the potential to make a lot of money shifting their drugs to the streets.

This would go to explain why it's still only commonly prescribed drugs we see on the street. It's what the pharmacies have in stock and they know suddenly buying in large amounts of rarely prescribed strong opiates would raise a lot more red flags but ordering in a bit of diazepam and tramadol can much more easily fly under the radar.

 

[BigG]

Back in the peak of my competitive bodybuilding days (95ish) a good mate of mine used to fly over to the Organon factory in Karachi, Pakistan where they made Sustanon 250 and Deca-Durabolin 100 which were very popular. Hed buy a few hundred thousand (up to a million) amls out the back door for about 10p each and have them sbipped home where they sold for 3-4 quid at the time.....madness!!!

 

[Wilson Wilson]

I have no doubt that's where many Indian, Pakistani, Sri Lankan, etc pills are coming from. In fact I've spoken to vendors and I know for a fact it's where the blister packed etizolam comes from.

My only doubt is UK pharma companies are doing this.

As well as the opiates, consider that diazepam is virtually the only benzo available on the streets in the UK. If people were buying direct from source, where's all the temazepam and clonazepam? Both would fetch a higher price on the streets. Actavis, TEVA, and all them lot make both too. And yet even on the DNMs there is no UK temazepam stock. Last I checked all you could get was Indian imports.

This is what tells me it must be pharmacies. A pharmaceutical company already hiding large sales of diazepam could do the same for other benzos. But a pharmacy would be limited to ordering in commonly prescribed drugs to avoid looking too suspicious, and that's exactly what we see on the market.

 

[Wilson Wilson]

Okay I did a bit of digging, considering how the supply chain actually works for delivering drugs to pharmacies - or delivering any product to any shop really. The retailer isn't going directly to the manufacturer, they buy from a wholesaler. So pharmaceutical wholesalers are companies buying drugs in bulk to sell on to the pharmacies... see where I'm going with this?

Here's an article about a wholesaler directing drugs, mostly diazepam, to the black market.

Some quotes:

The biggest single raid in the UK was on a property in Stevenage where a legitimate medicines wholesaler, holding an NHS licence, was found to be diverting drugs into online sales where they were sold without a prescription.

It is feared the business was set up and a NHS licence obtained purely to siphon off drugs.


The drugs regulator seized more than £700,000 worth of medicines, including £160,000 worth of diazepam, a powerful controlled drug for anxiety.

Investigations revealed the wholesaler was mainly supplying diazepam, a highly addictive pill for stress and anxiety disorders and one of the most commonly misused prescription drugs. Each pill has a street value of around £1.


Other drugs seized in a raid on the wholesale address include products for erectile dysfunction, insomnia, antidepressants, breast cancer, hypertension, hair loss, cholesterol, and gout. They have a total value of £755,211.

I think this answer's OP's question. It didn't make sense to me that pharma companies deal in this business directly, but thinking over it the volume is too high to simply come from dodgy pharmacies (although I'm sure those are still a source for some dealers). No one thinks of the wholesalers but they are in the perfect position to divert bulk drugs onto the black market.

 

[BigG]

I have no doubt that's where many Indian, Pakistani, Sri Lankan, etc pills are coming from. In fact I've spoken to vendors and I know for a fact it's where the blister packed etizolam comes from.

My only doubt is UK pharma companies are doing this.

As well as the opiates, consider that diazepam is virtually the only benzo available on the streets in the UK. If people were buying direct from source, where's all the temazepam and clonazepam? Both would fetch a higher price on the streets. Actavis, TEVA, and all them lot make both too. And yet even on the DNMs there is no UK temazepam stock. Last I checked all you could get was Indian imports.

This is what tells me it must be pharmacies. A pharmaceutical company already hiding large sales of diazepam could do the same for other benzos. But a pharmacy would be limited to ordering in commonly prescribed drugs to avoid looking too suspicious, and that's exactly what we see on the market.

Perhaps cos temaz is a controlled drug and diaz isnt

 

[Wilson Wilson]

All benzos are controlled drugs. Class C/Schedule 4. Temazepam has recommendations for stricter storage but other than that it's classed the same as all other benzos.

 

[BigG]

Is temaz not class a though....i could look it up

 

[consumer]

Is temaz not class a though....i could look it up

Temaz and diaz are both classed the same here in Australia. S4 controlled drugs. I would imagine they are classed the same in the UK too.

 

[blondin]

Its very hard for a pharmacist to sell scheduled drugs of any type as there has to be an audit trail of all scripts and for the sake of a few quid its doubtful they would risk their livelyhood.
IMO its more likely organised crime setting up phantom companies as wholesalers and buying directly from the manufacturer - not necessarily in the UK could be eastern europe for example were things maybe a little more lax a money greases the palms of those that need to turn a blind eye....I mean for fucks sake the CIA just about controlled the coke/crack imports bitd and problay are still in balls deep - there is no integrity left in politics or business just abouit making as much money as you can.

 

[Wilson Wilson]

Its very hard for a pharmacist to sell scheduled drugs of any type as there has to be an audit trail of all scripts and for the sake of a few quid its doubtful they would risk their livelyhood.
IMO its more likely organised crime setting up phantom companies as wholesalers and buying directly from the manufacturer - not necessarily in the UK could be eastern europe for example were things maybe a little more lax a money greases the palms of those that need to turn a blind eye....I mean for fucks sake the CIA just about controlled the coke/crack imports bitd and problay are still in balls deep - there is no integrity left in politics or business just abouit making as much money as you can.

I agree, it seems dodgy wholesalers make more sense for the sheer level of bulk you see on the market, and there's at least one reported case of a wholesaler supplying to the black market.

Dodgy pharmacists are more common than you think though. They don't tend to sell to people they don't know but think about it, if you get a drug at the trade price listed on that site and can sell it for the street price you're making a very decent margin.

They can't order rare drugs in specifically for this purpose but more commonly prescribed drugs which they're expected to keep in stock anyway like co-codamol and diazepam would likely be pretty easy to cover up sales for.

Look at the BBC article I linked, there have been multiple cases of pharmacies selling diazepam OTC with one even selling morphine.

 

[lysergamide]

Some of the RC benzos have permantly altered my tolerance to benzos though.

 

[Wilson Wilson]

Diclazepam feels very different to diazepam, you'd certainly be able to tell if you got one instead of the other. Diclazepam is much more like lorazepam.

 

[SmokingAces]

Really good thread however I really do think they're just exceptional fakes. I don't find them very strong at all.

A year or two ago when they first surfaced I'd generally have agreed with you. Alot of the fella's involved at a certain level being of Asian descent. But it appears not, with the boxes of DHC, oxy and other opiates aswell as the benzo's all being UK brands, it does kinda point to some sort of domestic high level pharmaceutical corruption.