00:00Sous-titrage Société Radio-Canada
00:31From weight loss jabs to erectile dysfunction pills,
00:35the trade in medication and healthcare products bought online without prescription is booming.
00:40Cheaper alternatives or difficulty accessing treatments legitimately appear to be fueling demand,
00:46but sometimes the consequences can be fatal.
00:49Across Europe, a surge in counterfeit painkillers containing synthetic opioids known as nitazines
00:56has 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 nitazines,
01:17that can be hundreds, even thousands of times more potent than oxycodone.
01:21Nitazines are so dangerous for human health because they will have an effect on the central nervous system.
01:26You will have a respiratory depression, so it basically means that your breathing stops
01:31and that will lead to death within a few minutes.
01:35Stopping the online fraudsters has become a major challenge for authorities.
01:40As soon as one website disappears, another can pop up.
01:43You cannot sell, offer, dispense medicinal products when you're not a pharmacy.
01:50So the rules are clear.
01:51It's just that the enforcement doesn't keep pace with what's happening in reality.
01:57Because the medication looks like actual medication,
02:00sometimes even with, like, the blister packages and the right color and all these kind of things,
02:04people think, okay, this is something that I can buy and take for whatever pain or symptom that I have.
02:12Experts say it's the potency of the synthetic opioids they're seeing in fake pills which makes them so dangerous.
02:20Synthetic opioids are much stronger than the classic morphine,
02:24500 times more potent than morphine, 100 times more potent than fentanyls.
02:29So, 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.
02:38And many people probably don't realize that they're not dealing with a legitimate pharmacy,
02:43but just with a convincing-looking website.
02:52But it isn't just fake pharmaceuticals.
02:55Counterfeit luxury goods, electronics and tobacco products are just some of the many other goods traded online.
03:01Technology, social media, online marketplaces, you go online, you find an online shop, you buy products, you think, wow, that's
03:10a bargain.
03:11While in fact, you can just buy bad quality or even harmful products that will be shipped to you thanks
03:18to this great technology.
03:19Il faut savoir que les influenceurs font la promotion de contrefaçons, souvent sans le savoir, en utilisant un nouveau vocabulaire.
03:27On parle de dupes, on parle de clones, on parle de génériques.
03:31Tout cela, ce sont des produits qui sont des contrefaçons et qui sont punis d'un point de vue légal
03:35comme des contrefaçons,
03:37mais qui finalement paraissent être autorisés car les influenceurs utilisent ce nouveau vocabulaire.
03:42In terms of trends, we've all seen lately what e-commerce has done.
03:47It has essentially given protesters the capacity to bring these goods to our houses, to our doors,
03:53and controlling that is very, very difficult because every shipment is now one single parcel with one or two things
04:01in them,
04:01and that makes it difficult to detect, difficult to stop at the border when it comes in.
04:06The nature of the illicit trades now is often digital, and even the payments can be obviously arranged thanks to
04:14the use of cryptocurrencies.
04:15This way, obviously, it's even harder for us and the law enforcement agencies to trace all the financial flows when
04:22the cryptocurrency is involved.
04:30The world is literally flooded with small packages.
04:35You have millions of packages that are flooding the world, and so the big difficulty is understanding in which packages
04:42you have something illicit.
04:44We see a tremendous growth in small parcels.
04:48Tremendous growth.
04:50Thousands of thousands of fast parcels containing counterfeit products.
04:54It's really difficult to detain them, to seize them, to spot fake goods in these fast parcels.
05:01They offer great possibilities for bad actors to smuggle products across the borders.
05:08Between 2016 and 2022, the global volume of postal packages increased by 150% from 64 billion to 161 billion
05:19units.
05:20In 2028, the volume is expected to reach 225 billion parcels.
05:26It's moved very fast now.
05:28I mean, they used to come by ship.
05:30Now they fly in, so it's a matter of hours before they come into the European Union.
05:35Intercepting that sort of traffic is complicated, because you can't really get a grip on everything that is moving on
05:42through courrier or through postal services.
05:49Today, to buy a counterfeit, it's financing the criminal organizations.
05:53It's a crime that is little punished.
05:55It's the reason why the criminal networks have come to be positioned on this illicit activity.
06:01It's an activity that, finally, has little risk and that is very big.
06:06There is an increasing level of polycriminality in any criminal organization.
06:11They just shift from one market to another, from a product to another.
06:15At the same time, quite a low risk in terms of sanctions.
06:19Often, the sanctions are not as high as, for example, those that are seen for the drug trafficking.
06:28When you buy a cigarette in the black market, you simply do not know what you are breathing.
06:33When you buy a counterfeit medicine on the black market, you are lucky if there is no active ingredient within
06:43it.
06:43In the worst-case scenario, you have dangerous substances that make your own disease or condition even worse.
06:52If people want to buy medicines online, I would say only buy medicines with a registered pharmaceutical company.
06:59And if it's not a registered pharmaceutical company, don't do it.
07:02The golden rule is know exactly where you buy your medicinal products or order your medicinal products.
07:09We already have a logo, an EU logo, for online pharmacies that are authorized to dispense medicinal products to patients.
07:19Because you really do not want to take risks with your health and with your life.
07:23You cannot trust anything that you buy online in terms of medication if it's not from a legit pharmacy.
07:30So go to your doctor, even if it's a hard conversation to have.
07:34But if you buy medication online, you don't know what you're getting.
07:38So go to your doctor, even if it's a hard something.
