On November 12, 2008, Interpol, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and other law enforcement agencies in at least TEN countries raided facilities, seized illegal medicines and arrested individuals allegedly connected to rogue online pharmacies.

According to Interpol, the coordinated raids were "the first time that action was taken on an international scale, with participating countries including Australia, Canada, Germany, Ireland, Israel, New Zealand, Singapore, Switzerland, the UK and the USA." There was, however, cross-border cooperation even before then. Two years ago, for example, the Philadelphia Inquirer published a superb eight part series about an online pharmacy that shipped drugs illegally to the United States from India. A task force of Indian and American law-enforcement agents cracked down on the operation and arrested, among others, an Indian doctor based in Agra and his son doing graduate studies in the U.S.

But the results of the raids seemed to vary greatly from continent to continent: A Lexis-Nexis search returned only eight news wire reports of the raids. In the US, according to a press release from US Fed News, the agents raided mail processing facilities in Dallas, Chicago, Seattle and New York. "Approximately 635 international mail parcels were physically examined; 18 were seized. The contents of the seized parcels included counterfeit Viagra, Cialis, steroids and Xanax.“ The raids in the UK apparently had more promising results: Over 1,000 packs of unlicensed medicines were recovered according to a news report by Reuters.

The BKA, the German federal police, did not even publish a press release about the operation, but that could be because German agencies are generally not interested in much publicity. Moreover, Germany regulates the pharmaceutical industry much more stringently. I witnessed the battle that raged there for years over whether even nonprescription drugs can be sold online. In 2004, online sales of prescription drugs were permitted but only licensed online pharmacies are allowed to operate and patients are required to send the original prescription to the pharmacy.

The pharmacologist and former president of the German Federal Institute for Drugs and Medical Devices (BfArM) used to argue that “nowhere were people safer from counterfeit drugs than in Germany.” according to an article from 2007 in the Atlantic Times.

For sure, German police have been on the prowl for illegal drugs. In September 2007, they searched 66 private homes and businesses in search of counterfeit cycostatics, an-anti cancer drug, said the Atlantic Times report. But despite aggressive policing and stringent national laws, German authorities are finding it difficult to crack down on illegal cross-border sales of drugs done through the Internet and the international postal system.

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