Posted on Fri, May. 14, 2010
Injectable slimming products from Colombia. Antibiotics from Honduras. Diabetic medicines from Jamaica. Even a small bone from Haiti, probably meant for a Vodou ceremony. ``We see it all here,'' said Andrea Charles-Julien, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration supervisor at a foreign-mail inspection facility in West Miami-Dade. On Thursday, dozens of federal agents completed a three-day blitz at the facility, poring through piles of packages filled with illegal pharmaceutical drugs, dietary supplements and home remedies mailed from foreign countries. The FDA led the operation, designed to weed out thousands of unapproved medicines, most sent from Latin America and the Caribbean. For years, the FDA has zeroed in on hot spots such as Miami, Los Angeles and New York for random inspections of counterfeit and misbranded prescription products that are not allowed to enter the country. Many are purchased from foreign suppliers over the Internet, an increasingly risky shopping place for pharmaceutical drugs with unsafe ingredients, inaccurate dosages and false expiration dates. The FDA's goal: to stop the illegal products from entering the country. ``When counterfeit and unapproved drugs come into this country, it is compromising the overall drug system that we have,'' said David K. Elder, a senior FDA official. ``We're trying to prevent their release into the U.S. market.'' To that end, the 200,000-square-foot U.S. Customs and Border Protection mail facility was set up Thursday with assembly lines of Customs officers, assisted by dozens of agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Drug Enforcement Administration. A Customs officer screened the thousands of pieces of foreign mail in a giant X-ray machine, separating yellow packages and cardboard boxes filled with suspicious pharmaceuticals and other products. Agents then tore open the parcels, recorded their contents and referred some for forensic lab analysis to determine the contents of the drugs. The vast majority of intercepted pharmaceuticals, diet pills and home remedies are returned to sender. ``We have no authority to destroy them,'' Charles-Julien said. ``We have to send them back.'' Some inspections have led to criminal investigations by the FDA and ICE, including South Florida probes into Brazilian diet pills laced with speed that are sold over the Internet. Last year, the Miami Customs facility processed about 36 million pieces of foreign mail. Of that total, inspectors referred between 8,000 and 10,000 foreign parcels containing unapproved medications to the FDA for further evaluation. But criminal prosecutions are not common in South Florida. Last year, FDA and ICE agents completed a major criminal investigation in Houston that targeted Chinese national Kevin Xu. He was convicted of distributing counterfeit and misbranded drugs for blood clots, prostate cancer, Alzheimer's and schizophrenia. In 2008, federal prosecutors in Denver indicted a Greek national, Georgios Xydeas, on charges of selling counterfeit and misbranded prescription drugs. He was accused of selling the Chinese-supplied drugs, such as Viagra, Cialis and Xanax, to Internet pharmacies. FDA and other officials said they cannot say how many deaths have resulted from the illegal importation of prescription drugs bought from foreign suppliers over the Internet. But they said using such drugs is risky for consumers. FDA special agent Michael Kurisky said, for instance, that buying prescription drugs from Canadian suppliers might seem safe. But he stressed that many Canadian website distributors are supplied by sources in Asia or Eastern Europe. Said Kurisky: ``The ingredients are bad.''
Immigration and Customs Enforcement Special Agent George Goff inspects packages Thursday at the West Miami-Dade mail facility. PATRICK FARRELL/MIAMI HERALD STAFF
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