Smuggled, substandard medicine floods Kurdish market

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region— Nearly half of all medicine available on the Kurdish market has been smuggled into the Kurdistan Region and is more than often made under substandard conditions in neighboring countries, a Rudaw investigative report shows. 

Large volumes of the smuggled medicine are sold in virtually all Kurdish pharmacies despite the strict regulations and government’s past promises of combating illegal import of the much needed drugs into the country. 

The Kurdish government has over the past years toughened penalties for buying and selling of pharmaceuticals on the black market, and also for smuggling them across borders.

Confirming Rudaw’s estimates of the scale of smuggled medicine, a Kurdish official with knowledge on the multi-million dollar business said in some cases “powerful officials” were involved in the illegal trade, often facilitating the cross-border flow of the medicine. 

“I could say that about 40% to 50% of the medicine sold in the Kurdistan Region have been smuggled in. In many cases high-ranking officials, including those in the security and the checkpoints, either help the smugglers or smuggle the medicines themselves,” the Director of the Office of Drug Control Sherwan Sadiq told Rudaw.  

The implications caused by smuggled medicines are so wide spread that many patients simply choose to travel to the neighboring countries for both treatment and purchase of their needed drugs, the report shows. 

No reliable figures are available as to how large the smuggling business is, but many drugstore owners believe the illegal cross border trade is one of the most lucrative of businesses in the country with an ageing population and relatively high birth rates.  

The Rudaw report shows that much of the black trade  takes place through standard border gates from both Turkey and Iran but also large volumes of the illegal medicine come from Iraq through Kirkuk which is outside the KRG.   

Government officials however insist that their past regulations have had a positive impact and reduced the overall amount of the black import.

“There is still smuggled medicine on the market but in no ways it’s comparable to the past. It’s much smaller in volume,” the Spokesperson of the Health Ministry Khalis Qadir told Rudaw. 

“We have suggested to the government to first centralize the import to tackle the problem and then it can allow private companies to take part in the trade,” he said.