Author: Fernanda Aranda

Source: Abril.com, 29/04/2009

São Paulo - The internet is one of the main hubs of trafficking in counterfeit drugs worldwide, especially drugs to combat erectile dysfunction. During the congress of the European Association of Urology, at the end of last year in Sweden, it was announced that between 4,5 and 15 websites sell medicines, most of them fake. In Brazil, between January and March this year, 120 tons of illegal therapies were collected in operations by the Ministry of Justice and the National Health Surveillance Agency (Anvisa). On the Anvisa website, 75% of these drugs are for erectile dysfunction.

To get an idea of ​​the escalation of piracy, last year, Anvisa agents removed 130 tons of illegal drugs from circulation. In addition to these figures, the internet as a point of sale appears in the data of the Brazilian Association of Software Companies (Abes): in this first quarter, 5,4 pages that sold illegal products were removed from the air, including pills for sexual impotence.

The anonymity of the seller, linked to the shame of looking for official means to deal with the problem of sexuality, are the fuels of the clandestine drug market. The president of the National Council to Combat Piracy, of the Ministry of Justice, Luiz Barreto, explains that the internet is fertile ground for the commercialization of counterfeits because the control and identification of the criminal is even more difficult.

According to the director of the Brazilian Society of Urology, Aguinaldo Nardi, two factors make Brazilians potential customers of these pirated remedies on the internet - which can cause anything from severe to intoxication. “The culture of self-medication and the sale of over-the-counter drugs, which predominates here, end up facilitating the consumption of counterfeits, since the criterion at the time of purchase ends up being the price”, he explains.