Caveat emptor

It has been more than two weeks since government enforcement authorities raided a big warehouse in Parañaque City based on tip-off that suspected smuggled products were being kept there. Combined elements of the Bureau of Customs, the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI), and Food and Drug Administration (FDA) conducted the raid.

Typical of government raids, nothing was heard about it after it came out in the news. According to the initial post-operation report, the raid discovered illegally sourced or counterfeit medicine in that warehouse located inside a private village in Parañaque. A popular chain of stores of generic medicine allegedly owns the warehouse. That should explain the presence of FDA authorities.

But why has the FDA not come out up to now with an official inventory of the seized counterfeit medicine? It behooves the FDA to warn the public against the possibility that smuggled counterfeit medicine may have already been distributed from that warehouse.

We heard rumors that the raid discovered several medicine/drug concoctions that did not come from the supposed source as indicated in the packaging of these products. One such product seized from the raid is reportedly a popular cure for mouth sores, or “singaw.”

Other than this, we have no way of knowing what these seized medicine/drug products were. But this is definitely a cause for concern, in fact, a public health issue.

A case in point is the reported sale of illegally imported skin-whitening products available over the counter in neighborhood drug stores. Facetiously, these skin-whitening products do not even need the black market! 

It took a very active advocacy group called EcoWaste Coalition to advise the public about several brands of skin-whitening products found to contain high levels of mercury that are being sold in Metro Manila and other parts of the country. Mercury, in any form, is poisonous. Use of products laced with high levels of mercury can harm a person’s health. 

In November last year, the EcoWaste cited the FDA-banned Erna Whitening Cream and 10 other skin-whitening cosmetic products for containing mercury above the maximum allowable limit of one part per million (ppm).

The EcoWaste claimed it was able to buy the Erna Whitening Cream from 10 Chinese drug stores in Divisoria, Quiapo and Sta. Cruz, all in Manila. According to the group, this particular brand of skin-whitening product is reportedly imported from Malaysia and Indonesia and sells for P60 to P80 each and is packed in small white plaster jar with the words “Erna Whitening Cream” printed in gold.

If already banned by our FDA, why are these skin-whitening products still being sold with obvious impunity? No matter how vain men and women who use skin-whitening products are, they will not surely put their health in danger if only they know what these FDA-banned products are.

In my previous column, I also raised concern about the seeming growing use of an anti-ulcer medicine that can cause harm to a woman’s uterus, especially if taken during pregnancy. Produced abroad, Cytotec (with generic name misoprostal) is banned by our FDA because it is found to be abortifacient. But many abortion cases in public hospitals are reportedly due to the use of this medicine, involving girls barely in their teens.

How and where these girls get this banned product? As I gathered, they are being sold in the black market in Quiapo among the stalls that sell herbal concoctions of “pamparegla” (inducing women’s menstrual cycle),” a euphemism for abortion.   

So, it is incumbent upon the FDA to be transparent and forthright to the public of what counterfeit medicine products were seized from that raid in Parañaque City.

It would seem the transparency policy that FDA top honcho Dr. Kenneth Hartigan-Go has introduced in the government agency has been waylaid in the aftermath of that combined NBI-Customs-FDA raid. Some of these transparency measures include listings of how long FDA personnel act on a request such as for a license to operate and the testing done on a particular product to be offered to the public, that are clearly posted in the FDA premises.

Or perhaps, the FDA boss just wants to make sure that the case against the owner of the warehouse, a big generic chain, is airtight. That could be the reason for the lack of public update on developments on that raid. Sources in the FDA estimate that the confiscated drugs were worth around P600 million, which could explain why we have not heard the specifics of this case.

For whatever reasons there may be, we would like to believe that the FDA just wants to plug all loopholes before coming out with its final report of that raid, especially for that big haul of popular drug brands not dutifully cleared with the FDA, if not outright counterfeit medicine.

The FDA cannot abandon though its duty to the public and leave the buyers to the so-called caveat emptor maxim. It’s a Latin maxim which literally means “let the buyer beware.” In commercial transactions, caveat emptor means the buyer purchases a product at his own risk in the absence of an expressed warranty. But in this case of imported medicine/drugs, these must have passed FDA scrutiny as fit for public consumption.

Like a caveat emptor, we would like to warn the public, especially our readers, from unscrupulous individuals calling private and business offices and introducing themselves as staff members of The Philippine STAR. For the past two weeks, I have been receiving telephone queries from those who have the common sense to check with The STAR if indeed we have in our employ one such individual.

Using a name that could be an alias, the caller tells a potential victim that he or she is doing a story about their company that will come out in The STAR and that he or she is supposedly getting their side before filing the story in time for the “deadline” that day. It’s an old racket. However, it is still obviously going on unabated.

Caveat emptor, if you are not involved in any illegal activity and have nothing to hide, why pay attention to these racketeers? Better yet, report them to the authorities and entrap these racketeers!