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Today – February 9, 2019 – the Falsified Medicines Directive 2011/62/EU has come into effect. It requires pharmaceutical manufacturers to provide secondary packaging of prescription medicines with an individual serial number as a 2D code for identification, plus a tamper-evident feature proving that the packaging is intact. This requirement is intended to stop illegal trading of falsified medicines.

Falsified medicines are a lucrative business for criminals. According to the “Pharmaceutical Crime: A Growth Market” research report published by the German Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) in October 2016, one kilogram of the counterfeit version of a well-known potency-enhancing drug sells for 90,000 euros on average, whereas the price of cocaine is estimated at “merely” 65,000 euros. The serialization of packaging, complemented by anti-counterfeiting labels, helps stop this illegal trade.

Incidents of medicine counterfeiting increasingly often make the headlines – particularly when customs authorities achieve a major coup. In September 2017, German customs confiscated 950 parcels with 68,000 falsified pills and vials at only three parcel centers within a single week. An anonymized survey revealed that one in eight physicians has at one time or another held a counterfeit in his/her hand, and even six in 500 pharmacists have. One in seven counterfeits comes from a pharmacy in another EU country.