A review from Pharmaceutical Commerce posted September 23, 2006 praises ACSH's report Counterfeit Drugs: Coming to a Pharmacy Near You by Wyatt Yankus:
Included in this assessment is a useful presentation of the convoluted path taken by many pharmaceuticals to the marketplace, developed by the book's author, Wyatt Yankus. While most drugs pass through the presumably secure channel, he writes, that flows from the pharmaceutical manufacturers to the "Big Three" wholesalers to pharmacies and then to the consumer, as much as 10% of the nation's wholesale drug supply travels through a complex and confusing network of distributors, intermediaries, and secondary wholesalers, a vast array of businesses, most legitimate, many semi-legitimate, and some outright criminal. The book also concisely captures the circumstances of the pharmaceutical market in the developing world, where the rate of counterfeiting can affect more than half of the entire drug market in these countries.
In a concluding section, ACSH highlights the regulatory disconnect between FDA, which regulates drug manufacturing, and state Boards of Pharmacy, which oversee drug distribution and licensing practices. Moreover, the FDA must share its regulatory authority with more than twenty other federal agencies, most notably the Drug Enforcement Agency and Federal Trade Commission, says Yankus, and proposes that new federal legislation might be necessary.
