Counterfeit and Piracy: The Constraint to World Health, Economy, and Society
As different industries are producing high-quality products to respond to the needs of 21st-century generation, the problem of counterfeit and piracy is rising thus becoming a threat to the society and economy. Counterfeit and piracy do not discriminate industries; they are threats to almost every industry where profits can be made. Among the most targeted industries, there are fashions and luxury industry, software and media industry, and pharmaceutical industry which is the focus of this paper. Counterfeit and piracy of pharmaceutical industry do not only affect the social and economic development of the world but also account for the loss of life of many people
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According to Cambridge English Dictionary, to counterfeit is an act of making a product that looks original of something, usually for dishonest or illegal purposes. ("counterfeit Meaning in the Cambridge English Dictionary," n.d.) As it relates to pharmaceutical, it refers to the act of illegally copying, imitating, or producing drugs and other pharmaceutical products with an aim of deceiving customers that they are genuine. Those products are usually sold at the same cost as the cost of genuine ones. Contrary to counterfeit, piracy as it relates to the pharmaceutical industry is the act of copying drugs and other pharmaceutical products with the knowledge that customers will know that they are fake. Hence selling them at low cost compared to genuine ones. Intellectual property, copyright, trademark, and licensing are other terms that cannot be left behind as one talks about counterfeit and …show more content…
(n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.safemedicines.org/2005/11/109th-congress-discusses-the-tragic-death-of-missouri-cancer-patient-given-counterfeit-drugs.html counterfeit Meaning in the Cambridge English Dictionary. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/counterfeit
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In her New York editorial Terror’s Purse Strings, Dana Thomas speaks on luxury items that are counterfeited and how they correlate to various issues around the world. Demonstrating quantitive evidence with a variety of statistics to raise awareness of the dangerous acts that are so closely related with forged components. Dana Thomas does not shy away from the real problems that are presented when expressing the research that she conducted in order to inform the reader accurately. For Dana Thomas’ debate she went all the way to Guangzhou and accompanied Chinese police officers to a factory that was an active participant in child labor.
As mentioned in Napoleons’ Button (Couteur and Burreson, 2003), ever since the discovery of penicillin, wound infection declines, saving plenty of lives, especially during the World War 2. The rapid advancement of drugs has indeed come a long way and even revolutionized the world. Drugs such as paracetemol helps to subside one’s fever and provide pain relief. On the other hand, drugs that are widely used illegally such as cocaine would be detrimental to one’s personal health when consumed. In any case, the mere existence of drugs is good in nature.
Chapter two introduces the policy problems related to the War on Drugs, as well as other policies that banned or limited other use of alcohol and drugs. Authors start with the history of the regulations of mood altering substances that began in colonial times, and then it escalated with “The Father of Modern Drug Enforcement”, Dr. Hamilton Wright. President Roosevelt assigned him to be the first Opium Drug Commissioner of the United States. Dr. Wright saw drugs as a big problem, according to the text the drug prohibitions started with his opinions on limiting drug use. In 1906 the Pure Food and Drug Act was signed and required the labeling of the ingredients of the products.
The Harrison Narcotics Tax Act of 1914 consisted of "a special tax on all persons who produce, import, manufacture, compound, deal in, dispense, sell, distribute, or give away opium or coca leaves, their salts, derivatives, or preparations, and for other purposes," (www.cfr.org). Blockbuster sold Morphine Hydrochloride to a buyer, that was not in it’s original packaging. Which violated
In the essay, “Terror’s Purse Strings” written by Dana Thomas and published in New York Times. Thomas begins talking about expensive fashion bags produced around the world. She elaborates how easy it is to mimic fashion and sell it for a cheaper price. Thomas implies how purchasing a fake product leads to child labor, a getaway to terrorism, and how they are run by crime syndicates. She suggests a solution for this issue and how people should stop buying fakes to take counterfeiters out of business.
Nowadays it seems like legal drugs are more expensive than illegal ones. This dilemma occurs because the pharmaceutical industry affects the economy significantly. Although the United States is a mixed market economy, there are instances where the economy seems like a free market economy. A free market economy allows companies to determine the prices of goods free from government intervention. The pharmaceutical industry, despite several regulations set by the food and drug administration, is a free market economy.
First, there is alarming rise in mortality rates together with other formidable effects initiated by the anomalous use of opioid pain relievers. A study by the U.S. Food & Drug Administration (2014) outlines that in 2009, more than 15,500 individuals in the United States died due to overdose on opiate pain relievers, a 300% rise in accordance with its history for the last 20 years. These alarming figures have increased the national interest regarding the climb in for script drug abuse in the United States. An additional cause is the escalating diversion of these drugs. Diversion in association with drugs implies to the illegal usage of licit dugs; and it happens when medications are counterfeit, medical records have been interfered with showing false information that a certain drug has been administered while it has actually been purloined, or when prescriptions go missing or stolen.
When understanding the drug problems we face today, we have to look at the history of how drugs became popular and what they do. Some historians would say this country was founded by tobacco, the first big cash crop the colonies produced. It was first used for chewing, pipe smoking and snuff. Cigarettes popularity started after World War II but eventually declined after showing the correlations between smoking and cancer. (A Brief History of Tobacco) Marijuana was also a cash crop starting in Jamestown but instead of using it for smoking it was used for making rope, clothing and sails.
For example, agencies have been established with the sole intent to manage drug use and distribution and technology has been exclusively developed to detect the presence of drugs. Yet, evidence has indicated that such exhaustive efforts have been relatively unsuccessful. First, it has been assumed that drugs have perpetuated violence in society and based on this rationale, it was believed that by the suppressing the pervasiveness of drugs that incidents of violence would simultaneously diminish. However, reality has failed to align with the expectations that had initially been anticipated. Research findings have suggested that the decriminalization of drugs would result in a less adversarial drug market in which conflicts have tended to arise among dealers as well as between dealers and buyers (Common Sense for Drug Policy, 2007, p. 21).
For example, one time in high school, I witness this kid put 5 white rectangular pills in his mouth, from my point of view I thought that was excessive. The next thing we know this kid is just acting totally different, but somehow he manages to keep a low profile and the teachers don’t notice. Prescription drug abuse is on the rise as we have seen on the news if you don’t live under a rock. Teens and adults have managed to get their hands on these prescriptions. People abuse prescription drugs because they think they will have a better time
Drugs are the dangerous substances that will destroy the consumer both physically and mentally; therefore, it is necessary to determine these substances restrictively. In order to do that, I am strongly assuring that the drugs should be legalized. There are three main reasons why the drugs should be legalized: diminution of crime rates, health guarantee, and extending of drugs regulation. Drugs are one of the crime sources, although not by the drugs, itself, but the condition. Illegal drugs are rare products that could not be found in the normal market, the cost for its rarity is totally expensive.
When people take these synthetic heroin pills, they do not feel as though it is a drug addiction as much as it is a way for them to deal with pain, over-stimulation, and as a tranquilizer. Today, we are currently facing an epidemic with drug addiction and continuously trying to solve the problem with a war on drugs. “The U.S. spends about $51 billion a year enforcing the war on drugs, and arrests nearly 1.5 million people for drug violations, according to Drug Policy Alliance, a drug policy reform group” (Ferner). Since the United States spends so much money on this epidemic, the numbers should start to go down, but it is instead doing the opposite. It is easy to figure out the numbers through doctors, “Increases in prescription drug misuse over the last
If there was an open market for drugs and Americans’ were educated on the effects drugs can have on their bodies, the monopoly for drugs would rapidly decrease. Drugs are outlawed in America yet prohibition has never been successful in America. Anytime the government has tried to stop the distribution of a substance people have always jumped at the chance to make
Public order crimes are acts considered illegal because they do not conform to society’s general ideas of normal social behavior and moral values (Siegel, 2000). Public order crimes are viewed as harmful to the public good or harmful and disruptive to a community’s daily life (Siegel, 2000). Some public order crimes are considered very serious, others are legal in some places and at sometimes and others are illegal at other times and in other places (Sage, n.d., p. 218). It is thought that allowing or ignoring public order offenses can only lead to more serious crimes it signals the community that nobody cares (Sage, n.d., p. 218). Public order crimes cause great debate.
The companies in today industry serve a huge competitiveness. Current competitors take advantage of the demands from consumers to earn high profit margins. Fendi is known as a rich brand heritage and is the first global group in luxury product. They are widely recognized for its leathers, furs, watches and bags.