In an article this week a self defined “diverse group of authors from the health professions, health charities, legal and medical academia, and former or current government officials in health” present us with a troubling paradox: the world currently has tighter laws to tackle fake tobacco products than it does to tackle fake drugs (doi:10.1136/bmj.e7381). At the moment, as they explain, there are laws that promote an open global medicines trade but no binding international health law on drug safety. The result is that fake and substandard drugs continue to harm and kill people around the world, affecting both proprietary and generic drugs, and haunting rich countries as well as poor. As Andrew Jack explains (doi:10.1136/bmj.e7836 …
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F. Godlee (2012) studied this question.