00:05If there is a demand, someone will always create the supply, whether it's legal or illegal.
00:18There's just no way of knowing that the pill or the, you know, whatever formulation that you bought
00:25actually contains what it says on the tin.
00:31From weight loss jabs to erectile dysfunction pills, the trade in medication and healthcare
00:37products bought online without prescription is booming. Cheaper alternatives or difficulty
00:42accessing treatments legitimately appear to be fueling demand, but sometimes the consequences
00:48can be fatal. Across Europe, a surge in counterfeit painkillers containing synthetic opioids known as
00:55nitrosines has been linked to multiple deaths, including in the Netherlands.
01:05There's, you know, numerous cases of fake oxycodone that was found to not contain any oxycodone at all,
01:11but, you know, one of the many so-called super opioids, the nitrosines, that can be hundreds,
01:18even thousands of times more potent than oxycodone.
01:21Nitrosines are so dangerous for human health because they will have an effect on the central
01:25nervous system. You will have a respiratory depression, so basically means that your breathing
01:30stops and that will lead to death within a few minutes.
01:35Stopping the online fraudsters has become a major challenge for authorities. As soon as one
01:41website disappears, another can pop up. You cannot sell, offer, dispense medicinal products when you're
01:49not a pharmacy. So the rules are clear. It's just that the enforcement doesn't keep pace with what's
01:55happening in reality. Because the medication looks like actual medication, sometimes even with like the
02:01blister packages and the right color and all these kind of things, people think, okay, this is something
02:07that I can buy and take for whatever pain or symptom that I have.
02:13Experts say it's the potency of the synthetic opioids they're seeing in fake pills, which makes
02:18them so dangerous.
02:20Synthetic opioids are much stronger than the classic morphine, 500 times more potent than morphine, 100
02:26times more potent than fentanyl. So, yeah, depending on the doses, they can be quite lethal.
02:32I think many people assume that when something is available online, then it's legitimate. And many
02:39people probably don't realize that they're not dealing with a legitimate pharmacy, but just with a
02:44convincing looking website.
02:52But it isn't just fake pharmaceuticals. Counterfeit luxury goods, electronics and tobacco products are just
02:58some of the many other goods traded online.
03:01Technology, social media, online marketplaces. You go online, you find an online shop, you buy
03:09products, you think, wow, that's a bargain. While in fact, you can just buy bad quality or even
03:15harmful products that will be shipped to you thanks to this great technology.
03:19It's important to know that influencers do the promotion of counterfeactions, often without
03:24knowing, by using a new vocabulary. We talk about dupes, clones, generics. All of these are
03:32products that are counterfeactions and are punished from a legal point of view as counterfeactions,
03:37but that, finally, seem to be authorized because influencers use this new vocabulary.
03:42In terms of trends, we've all seen lately what e-commerce has done. It has essentially given
03:49fraudsters the capacity to bring these goods to our houses, to our doors, and controlling
03:54that is very, very difficult because every shipment is now one single parcel with one or
04:00two things in them, and that makes it difficult to detect, difficult to stop at the border when
04:06it comes in.
04:06The nature of the illicit trades now is often digital, and even the payments can be, obviously,
04:13arranged thanks to the use of cryptocurrencies. This way, obviously, it's even harder for us
04:18and the law enforcement agencies to trace all the financial flows when the cryptocurrency
04:23is involved.
04:30The world is literally flooded with small packages. You have millions of packaging that are flooding
04:38the world, and so the big difficulty is understanding in which packages you have something illicit.
04:44We see a tremendous growth in small parcels. Tremendous growth. Thousands of thousands
04:51of fast parcels containing counterfeit products. It's really difficult to detain them, to seize
04:58them, to spot fake goods in these fast parcels. They offer great possibilities for bad actors
05:05to smuggle products across the borders.
05:08Between 2016 and 2022, the global volume of postal packages increased by 150% from 64 billion
05:17to 161 billion units. In 2028, the volume is expected to reach 225 billion parcels.
05:29These goods move very fast now. I mean, they used to come by ship. Now they fly in. So it's
05:35a matter of hours before they come into the European Union. Intercepting that sort of traffic
05:39is complicated, and you can't really get a grip on everything that is moving on through courrier
05:47or through postal services.
05:51Today, to buy a counterfeit, it's financing criminal organizations. It's a crime that is
05:57little punished. It's the reason why criminal networks have been positioned on this illicit activity.
06:03It's an activity that, in fact, has little risks and that brings very big.
06:09There is an increasing level of polycriminality in any criminal organization. They just shift
06:15from one market to another, from a product to another. At the same time, quite a low risk
06:20in terms of sanctions. Often the sanctions are not as high as, for example, those that are seen
06:26for the drug trafficking.
06:30When you buy a cigarette in the black market, you simply do not know what you are breathing.
06:36When you buy a counterfeit medicine on the black market, you are lucky if there is no active
06:44ingredient within it. In the worst case scenario, you have dangerous substances that make your own
06:52disease or condition even worse.
06:55Well, if people want to buy medicines online, I would say only buy medicines with a registered
07:00pharmaceutical company. And if it's not a registered pharmaceutical company, don't do it.
07:05The golden rule is know exactly where you buy your medicinal products or order your medicinal products.
07:12We already have a logo, an EU logo, for online pharmacies that are authorized to dispense
07:20medicinal products to patients because you really do not want to take risks with your health
07:25and with your life.
07:26You cannot trust anything that you buy online in terms of medication if it's not from a legit pharmacy.
07:33So go to your doctor, even if it's a hard conversation to have, but if you buy medication online,
07:40you don't know what you're getting.
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