Safe Medicines: True Crime and Medicine Safety

Patients don't know they risk their lives when they take supplements that contain actual medications not listed on the labels. Learn more.

Nashville officials warned of xyalzine threat. Learn more about this on our website at www.safemedicines.org.

Etsy is an online marketplace that most people associate with vintage and handcrafted items. However, there is also a thriving trade in chemicals on the site, and some vendors sell homemade versions of highly regulated pharmaceuticals. They are sold with a thin veneer of plausible deniability in clear violation of Etsy's policies. When vendors list these items on Etsy.com, they can be a public hea...

Though it sounds great, the ways in which Prescription Drug Affordability Boards are operating have negative implications for patients, funding of 340B programs, pharmacies, and the safety of the supply chain. PSM's Shabbir Imber Safdar and CANN CEO Jen Laws go in depth to talk about what PDABs are, how the tools they have create unintended consequences, and what dangerous situations they are like...

Listen to our congressional briefing panels!  In May 2022, PSM joined experts for an online congressional briefing to discuss the implications of Canadian and foreign prescription drug importation proposals on our ongoing ability to protect the U.S. drug supply. Speakers: Shabbir Imber Safdar, Executive Director, PSM Dr. Kenneth McCall, Pharmacist & Professor of Pharmacy at the University of N...

Over the past decade, PBMs have been cutting the reimbursements pharmacies receive for the medicine they dispense to insured patients into smaller and smaller amounts. In many places, those reimbursements don’t fully cover the acquisition cost of medicine. Pharmacies now routinely dispense medication that they lose money on. This is by design. A pharmacist sent us the 2024 contract for a major PBM...

Arizona-based Nootropics Depot will pay a forfeiture of $2.4 million for selling a bunch of unapproved drugs, including tianeptine, an antidepressant that's not approved in the U.S. but shows up in supplements. In fact, nine states have banned tianeptine because it's addictive and caused seizures, loss of consciousness and death.

A federal grand jury in California indicted two men for their alleged roles in a darknet-based drug trafficking scheme that sold over 120,000 fentanyl pills and 20 pounds of methamphetamine to approximately 1400 customers in all 50 states. Two additional men, Rajiv Srinivasan and Michael Ta, pleaded guilty for their roles in the ring earlier this year, admitting that five deaths had been linked to...

Another black market HIV case has been successfully prosecuted.

Over the past decade, PBMs have been cutting the reimbursements pharmacies receive for the medicine they dispense to insured patients into smaller and smaller amounts. In many places, those reimbursements don’t fully cover the acquisition cost of medicine. Pharmacies now routinely dispense medication that they lose money on. This is by design. A pharmacist sent us the 2024 contract for a major PBM...

On January 31, the Department of Justice (DOJ) announced that eBay had agreed to pay $59 million to settle allegations it had not followed recordkeeping and reporting requirements for the sale of pill presses and encapsulating machines that are specified in the Controlled Substances Act. The $59 million settlement is a signal to other online marketplaces that the federal government will not tolera...

Why did more than 100 children across the country with treatable cancer suddenly spike high fevers? Some fell into comas. Four died. Learn more about this mystery in Colombia.

Senator Mike Braun, the ranking member on the Senate Special Committee on Aging released  a report  examining the four-fold increase in overdose deaths among Americans 65 and older over the last 20 years. The report recommended increased research into the problem, as well as specific outreach educating seniors about counterfeit medicines made with fentanyl. 

A Chicago, Illinois man with diabetes had a seizure and went into a coma after injecting himself with an Ozempic pen that turned out to be a counterfeit filled with insulin. 

Hernandez sold millions in misbranded HIV drugs to U.S. pharmacies. His case illustrates how drug diversion operations work and why they are dangerous. For more information, visit safemedicines.org.