We all shop online to benefit from more choice and better prices. When it comes to making a big saving on medicine, there are a lot of great opportunities to save yourself considerable sums of cash online. However, this access to great savings doesn’t come without its problems. We take a look at the problems of low-quality medications and how you can avoid them.
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Risks of Bad-Quality Pills
The fundamental problem with pills that aren’t the high-quality you might hope, is the potential damage it can do to your health. How can you really be sure of what you are taking if the drugs are low-quality? Unless you go to the great trouble and expense of having the tested in a lab, you really cannot be completely sure that they are even safe.
None of us would want or expect to have something we have purchased tested in a lab to make sure it is what it claims to be. This is the situation you can find yourself in if you purchase meds from unreliable sources online. Of course, most people will just take the risk with the pills they have purchased in this situation. Hoping against hope that the little pills contain the ingredients that they are supposed to.
If your medicine does act in the way it should, you are going to suffer from your health deteriorating. This can and does lead to the death of patients every year. It might lead to more severe treatments being required in order to save the life of the individual who has been unfortunate enough to take the fake drugs.
Drug-Resistant Strains
Fake pills also lead to drug resistance. This is a problem with antibiotics as well as treatments for HIV, tuberculosis, and many more conditions. This could mean that even genuine drugs fail to work as they used to, thanks to the disease or virus changing to become immune to treatments that previously worked.
There are also economic problems created by fake and counterfeit drugs. While they are normally cheaper to purchase, the patient could end up paying more in the long run. Not only with their health but also the need for further tests and more drugs being needed to treat the illness. This can mean increased health expenses when the reason for buying the pills in the first place was to save money.
This problem will also affect pharmaceutical companies and importers. Leading to less research and development of new drugs to better treat patients, a problem that has grave long term affects.
Organized Crime
We all know about the organized crime elements involved in the sale and distribution of narcotics and other illegal substances. However, the sale of fake or counterfeit pills doesn’t carry the same risks for organized crime but the profits are substantial. This has led to organized crime gangs becoming involved in the manufacture and distribution of these products.
If you are purchasing low-quality pills you are often helping fund criminal gangs, enabling them to expand their operations in this and other crimes.
Counterfeit Medications
Counterfeit drugs imitate real medical products that could be lying about what they contain. While counterfeit drugs are less common in countries that have stricter regulations, when you shop online you are bypassing this regulation for the most part. You will almost certainly be getting the genuine product from big-name pharmacies, but that comes at a big price too.
Very often unscrupulous online pharmacies, are based in countries with low or no regulations. It is also common for these types of scam pharmacies to lie about where they are located, making you think you are buying from somewhere that has high standards when the reality is much worse.
Counterfeit pills are designed to convince you that they are the real thing, but they can be just as dangerous as other low-quality drugs. They will do everything possible to make the packets of counterfeit drugs look real, with identical designs, batch numbers, and even holograms.
Even if the pills look the same, there can be a few things wrong that might make you suspect your pills aren’t the genuine article. Perhaps, the results you experience taking the medications aren’t quite what you expect. If you have been taking these meds for a long time, any change in the results you experience could be an indication that you have fallen victim to buying counterfeit drugs.
This will mean that the ingredients in the pills aren’t as they should be. The counterfeit meds could contain completely different ingredients than you expect, or they could be contaminated, or even be packed full of chalk.
If you buy counterfeit drugs you could get pills that contain:
- Zero active ingredients
- Dangerous ingredients
- Poor quality ingredients
- Ingredients that shouldn’t be in the pill
- The wrong dosage
- Contamination thanks to non-sterile manufacturing
Identifying Low-Quality or Counterfeit Pills
If you have purchased some pills from an online pharmacy that you have some doubts about, there are a few things you can do short of sending them to a laboratory.
With counterfeit pills, you might be able to notice some differences in the quality of the pills. The real thing is going to be less rough around the edges than a copy. The manufacturing process will be far better with the genuine article, so you should expect a more quality looking pill. The counterfeit pill might also be using the wrong font when they emboss the pill, this is subtle and easy to miss, however.
If there are any problems with the visual appearance of the pills this could be an indication that they aren’t genuine. Look out for other problems with the pills, like cracks or chips in the tablets. Are some of the pills damaged or crushed? Is the pill the correct color or is there some discoloration? Are the pills softer than they should be? Any issues with the quality of the tablets aren’t what you would normally expect from a brand name manufacturer, and could point to counterfeit pills.
You should also carefully inspect the packaging. Any mistakes in what is written on the box or inconsistencies between the inner and outer pill packaging should be viewed with suspicion. The batch number and other details should be printed on the box as well as the plastic tablet packaging, and this should match up. These details should be printed perfectly, without errors or faded ink.
The manufacturer’s address and contact information should be shown on the package. If it just tells you the country of origin, this is a problem.
There should be a security seal on brand name products. Has this been tampered with, and does it look genuine? If you have the packaging of the same type of medication from a previous order from a reliable source, compare it. Are there obvious differences? Look carefully at the details for very slight issues which could point towards the new packet being counterfeit.
Drugs Pricing
Sometimes unreliable online drugstores are selling low priced pharmaceutical products. While this is very attractive to customers it can indicate that the products on offer aren’t high-quality. Counterfeit products are going to be sold for less than the real thing, making the seller a lot of money on products that cost little more to produce over normal low-quality meds.
How to Avoid Buying Bad Pills
One easy way to make sure you don’t fall into the trap of purchasing unreliable fake pills is to go to a reliable online pharmacy to get your meds. But how do you know what store is legit and which pharmacy will sell you dangerous drugs?
Scam online pharmacies can be very easy to miss. They will do everything they can to make themselves appear like a reliable drugstore. If you aren’t able to spot the clues or pick out the lies, you could find yourself spending a lot of money which you will later regret.
The best way is to check out pharmacy reviews 2020 from people who know what they are talking about. This should ensure you don’t put your trust in a store that is known to be selling low-quality pills to their customers.
Conclusion
There is a massive amount of counterfeit and low-quality pills on the market, and your chances of getting them delivered to you when you shop online are considerable. You can chance your luck, hoping to not be ripped off when ordering online, or you can check out our pharmacy reviews 2020 to make sure you don’t run into problems.
If you pay attention to where you are purchasing your meds and carefully examine the products you do receive, you should avoid the problems associated with purchasing meds online. If you are paying attention to your medication and how it affects you, the likelihood of taking pills that are going to do you more harm than good is much reduced, and you will have saved yourself a lot of money in the process.
