How to quickly identify whether a drug is fake?

　　My grandfather once bought it. He had severe asthma. He bought a bottle of anti-asthmatic medicine from Beijing after hearing the introduction from his old neighbor next door. He was very excited and told me that the small powder was very effective. He took one spoonful at a time and soon stopped breathing. But it only relieved him for a while, and after taking the medicine, his hands were shaking badly. Later I checked and found out that the approval number of the drug was all fake!

　　There are too many unscrupulous businesses and market supervision is not strict, so there are always loopholes that they can exploit. What to do? You can identify it yourself. There are four main methods: "look, hear, ask and understand"!

　　Wang: Scan what is written on the outer packaging

　　It is not too difficult to identify some of the medicines just by looking at the outer packaging.

　　There are three things you need to look at:

　　1. Look at the packaging: The simplest thing is to look at the printing quality of the outer packaging (box or bottle label). On pharmaceutical packaging boxes or labels produced by regular manufacturers, the fonts are printed clearly and there will be no blurred writing. And if you find that the printing quality is particularly poor and there are many overlapping images of the text, you should suspect that it is a fake medicine produced by a small workshop.

　　2. Look at the name of the medicine: Some will use a pretense that looks reliable. For example, the name of the medicine is "Biqi Jiangtang Capsule (Tangbiqing)", which is a big problem. Because according to regulations, the generic name (Biqi Jiangtang Capsule) and the trade name (Tangbiqing) cannot be placed on the same line, and the trade name cannot be placed in parentheses.

　　3. Look at the batch number: Check whether the "drug name", "specification" and "production batch number" are written on the packaging box or bottle label. If any of these three items are missing, it should be suspected. In addition, "indications", "usage and dosage", "storage", "production batch number" and "manufacturer" can also be written on the packaging.

　　Now, let’s take a look at the outer packaging of a medicine and see if the content shown in the red circle is correct?

　　 On the outer packaging, it generally has the following characteristics:

　　If there are self-promotional words such as "national-level new drugs", "protected varieties of traditional Chinese medicine", "GMP certification", "imported raw materials repackaging", "honored products", "products", "modern technology", "precious medicinal materials", etc., be highly suspicious.

　　Wen: Listen to what the manual tells you.

　　Scan the outer packaging, then open the medicine box and read the instructions to see what information it tells you.

　　A formal drug instruction manual should tell you "how to use this drug" rather than bragging about "how good this drug is."

　　What the hell?! There is no instruction manual when you open the pill box? That might be a problem. So what exactly should you “sniff”?

　　1. Is the content described in the manual complete?

　　Formal drug instructions should include ingredients, properties, usage and dosage, adverse reactions, contraindications, precautions, drug interactions, pharmacological effects, validity period, implementation standards, etc. Although market supervision is currently lax, not every instruction manual can be so strict and detailed. But if an instruction manual doesn't even tell you the "ingredients", "usage and dosage" and "expiry date", then there's obviously something wrong.

　　For example, for a certain hot-selling "High-efficiency Jingukang Capsule" that has been exposed before, the instruction manual only contains four items: "approval number," "manufacturer," "company address," and "functions and indications." The forgery is simple and crude.

　　2. Is the format of the validity period standardized?

　　In addition, it depends on the format of the validity period. It can say "valid until August 2016", or it can be as simple as "valid until 2016.08" or "valid until 2016-08". But please note that there must be a 0 in front of the single digit. If a drug is written as "valid until August 2016". If this 0 is missing, you should also suspect that there is a problem.

　　We can see that this instruction manual contains ingredients, properties, usage and dosage, adverse reactions, contraindications, etc. It is a qualified instruction manual, and this medicine will hardly be.

　　Question: Ask the most authoritative person

　　In terms of pharmaceuticals, the most authoritative one in China is of course the CFDA. CFDA is the State Food and Drug Administration. All drugs, whether domestic or imported, must be registered here. What is more beneficial to the public is that this huge drug registration database is open. Anyone can query it on the CFDA’s official website, which is located in the very eye-catching “data query” position on the homepage.

　　How to check specifically? Check the national drug approval number.

　　If you look through the entire drug packaging and instructions and can't find the "National Drug Approval" label, then there is probably something wrong with the drug. However, nowadays, merchants who make counterfeit goods will basically make a fake product and print a string of letters and numbers on it.

　　The standard format should be "National Drug Approval (Trial) + 1 letter + 8 digits", and the letters include H, Z, S, B, T, F, and J. Among them, H is the most common chemical drug, Z is a Chinese patent medicine, S is a biological product, B is a health drug, T is an in vitro chemical diagnostic reagent, F is a pharmaceutical excipient, and J is an imported subpackaged drug. There are 8 digits in the back number. If there is one more digit or one less digit, there will be problems.

　　For example: at the position shown in the red box, we can see the words "National Drug Approval".

　　Next, you enter this string of numbers into the "Data Query" column of the CFDA official website, and then compare the approval number with the medicine you have:

　　Is the name of the medicine correct?

　　Is the dosage form correct?

　　Are the specifications right?

　　Is the manufacturer right?

　　The most important thing is whether the indications are correct, because they usually exaggerate their effects or list some unfounded effects.

　　Don’t believe the approval numbers that start with the characters “Health Medicine and Health”. This kind of approval number has long been abolished, and the words that start with the characters “Guo Shijian” are not medicines, just health foods.

　　Cut: put a handful of the source of this medicine

　　Simply put, it is to find out where the medicine is purchased from.

　　For example, after being introduced to someone like my grandfather, you make a phone call to a "dealer" and are told that you can't buy it in pharmacies and can only mail it to you. That's basically a problem. Young people generally do not choose mail order, but there are many traps online. Never believe the “official”, “flagship store”, “only designated” and other self-labeled slogans of online pharmacies.

　　The key information you are looking for is the "Internet Drug Trading Service Organization Qualification Certificate Number".

　　For regular online pharmacies, this number will be marked prominently on the homepage. You also need to go to the CFDA to enter it and check it. Yes, also in the "Data Query" column, select the "Online Pharmacy" item. But even qualified online pharmacies are currently unable to sell prescription drugs. If you buy it, either the medicine is not legal or the store is not legal, both of which are worthy of suspicion.

　　Having said so much, in the final analysis, the most important identification method is: those who exaggerate themselves are probably evil. After all, medicines are not magic potions.