Fake Viagra & Cialis Pills Online: How to Spot Counterfeit
Online criminals, who make money from manufacturing counterfeits, focus their attention on the drugs that are in the highest demand and guarantee quick and easy profits. Viagra is one of the most popular brands, and one of the most frequently faked pills. Would you like to know how to protect yourself from fraud? Read this article, it will help you stay on the safe side.
What does a newcomer do when he needs an erection pill for the first time in his life? Well, the doctors say that you must visit a medical specialist, do all the tests and answer his questions, then get a prescription, and eventually go to the pharmacy and purchase the medicine.
The vast majority of men don’t want to do that, we’ve got used to buying things on the internet so much. Really, how many people actually go to a pizza parlor to bring the pizza home? Everything is available online, and the web-based stores make our life so much easier. You can have food, clothes, cell phones, home appliances — anything you want — in a click of a mouse.
The same goes for medications; lots of people prefer online shopping for drugs, for many reasons. First of all, this way it is easier to find the best offers, compare different pharmacies, brands, etc. Talking about erectile dysfunction, as well as the other sexual problems, there is one more significant advantage of the internet drug sellers. A man does not need to put himself in a stressful situation of staying in the local pharmacy and asking for a blue pill, because for many of us this is a huge problem. However, with big benefits come huge risks. You have to remember that alongside good and reputed sites that offer effective and safe pharmaceuticals, there are a lot of those that want to flog you a piece of chalk, at best. And you need to learn how to distinguish the one from the other.
Counterfeit Medicines As a Worldwide Problem
If you take the entire market, about 90% of all meds are real. But, the counterfeiters know their business — they cash in on the good names of reputed and famous brands. This is why over half of all erection pills in the world, and up to 77% of Viagra particularly, are fake. Really, if you google “buy Viagra online” you will get over 50 million results. Not all of them will be the links to online drugstores, but still, we can estimate that there are hundreds of thousands of the web-based pharmacies that sell erection drugs. Even if only 1% of them are bogus, this makes counterfeit medicines a worldwide problem.
In July 2011, the National Association of Boards of Pharmacy has made a research and checked more than 8000 online drug sellers that operated in US, and found out that only 3% of them were working legally. According to the report from the FDA (the U.S. Food and Drug Administration) commissioner from October 2010, there are countries where a third, or even a half, of all meds are fake. And the main driver for this phenomenon is the worldwide web. However, according to other investigations, only 3 out of 41 Viagra analogs sold online had different constituents from those approved by the FDA.
The first targets of counterfeiters were the drugs with a complicated procedure of getting a prescription, and those that cure intimate health issues, says Roger Bate, a British economist who is deeply into the problem of counterfeit medications. Nowadays, along with ED tablets and painkillers, the criminals produce fake blood pressure pharmaceuticals, preparations for cancer, cholesterol remedies, etc. Unfortunately, you never know what they put in their products. You’re lucky if there is only an eggshell powder there, but sometimes counterfeiters try to imitate the actions of genuine remedies, and include highly dangerous active compounds. Here we come to another important question to ask before thoughtlessly buying erection pills online — is it safe to take fake Viagra?
Can Fake ED Pills Be Dangerous for Men?
We will not talk about losing money when buying counterfeit drugs, because this is what we call getting off easy. Together with your savings, internet swindlers can take your health, and leave you with severe consequences of hazardous effects of their bogus pills. For example, a couple of years ago the FDA has detected the deadly compound haloperidol in counterfeits of popular antipsychotics. Obviously, if you do not know what exactly you are taking — you are at risk.
Talking about ED medications, there were cases when fake Cialis pills contained sildenafil instead of tadalafil. It sounds like an anecdote, but this is a very threatening tendency. First of all, because the dosages of these two ED drugs are different, and if you take 20 mg of sildenafil, it will not help with impotence, but will not cause any damage to your health. Let’s imagine that you wanted to buy Viagra, but the counterfeiters gave you the tablet with 100mg of tadalafil. Most probably, you will “enjoy” all adverse effects of an overdose.
Other ingredients that were found in fake Viagra confiscated during the FDA raids:
- heavy metals;
- gypsum, or another plaster;
- antibiotics and amphetamines;
- ink from the printer to make the pill blue.
Add to this various fungi, bacteria, and unregulated strength of the drugs. Too many dangers for one pill, don’t you agree?
Side Effects After Taking Counterfeit Drugs
With all that said, the most probable side effects of counterfeit drugs for ED include:
- intoxication;
- allergic reactions;
- mycosis;
- microbial infections;
- heart attack;
- hypertension;
- any adverse reactions related to overdosing.
Thus, the best thing that can happen to you after taking fake Viagra is that it will not produce any reaction at all.
How to Check Fake Viagra
If you want to buy branded Viagra online, you should do that in the drugstores that are listed on the website of the National Association of Boards of Pharmacy. This association issues a special seal in order to help users identify well-trusted websites. However, you should always remain vigilant. Here are some tips on how to spot counterfeit Viagra:
- different color of pills, or even different color of two sides of the same pill;
- sharp and indent corners of the tablet;
- the letter “f” in the word “Pfizer” on the front side is thinning from the middle, and the “G” on the back has the round shape and long inside leg;
- there are more or less than four pills in the pack;
- the expiration date is not readable, is expired, or has some signs over it.
If you have been taking genuine drugs for some time, you can compare the appearance, density, or any other characteristics of the branded and suspicious pills. You know how to check the counterfeit medications when you know the hallmarks of the real tabs and packages.
How to Spot Fake Cialis
The same applies to fake Cialis, too. Look attentively at the color, corners, and printing on the tablets. The edges should be uniform and not sharp. The “C” should be thick, and the “2” must have the round top. The expiration date should be clearly visible, and the packaging must have high-quality print, identical to the branded one. Illicit producers and distributors learn how to falsify the drugs constantly, and with time it gets harder to find the counterfeit when you compare fake blue pills vs real Viagra.
Still, the FDA keeps track of the illegal drug trade, and informs the users about the new waves of bogus medicines.
In 2015 there was a large shipment of fake Cialis entering the market, and the FDA has issued the warning with brief instructions on how to recognize that counterfeit:
- the design of the label was different from the genuine product, it was made in dark green and yellow colors;
- the name of the drug, as well as the name of the company, were spelled incorrectly — CLALIS and Eli lilly (a correct variant is Lilly, starts with a capital “L”);
- allegedly, these medicines were produced in Australia, which could not be true, because the company has never manufactured ED pills there;
- the expiration dates and the identification numbers were the same: “Lot: AC 066018, Exp: 01SEP17”, they were printed on the side of each bottle;
- there was no strength of the pills indicated in the proper place.
The FDA also asks users to help them spot fake drugs and report about all suspicious pills, packages and bottles they happen to buy in online pharmacies.
Can the US Authorities Identify Fake Pills?
The FDA tries to protect individuals from fraudulent activity. In order to do that, they conduct special operations in cooperation with Interpol and medical authorities from other countries. These operations are called Pangea, and every time they bust more and more online pharmacies that sell counterfeit drugs:
- the operation Pangea II, conducted in November 2009, has detected 1200 sites that were selling fake medications, closed down other internet resources that were involved in this activity, including 17 advertising platforms;
- in September 2011, Pangea IV has covered 81 countries and shut down 13 thousand websites. The value of confiscated pills exceeded 6 million dollars;
- the operation Pangea VIII that took place in 2015 has closed almost two and a half thousand web resources, more than 150 people were arrested, while the seized meds were worth more than 80 million USD;
- medical authorities, custom services, and police from more than 100 countries took part in the latest Pangea XI, which took place in October 2018. They’ve found 500 tonnes of fake drugs for sale, as well as 110 thousand medical devices, in more than 3500 online drugstores. These medications and instruments were confiscated, the websites were closed, and 859 criminals were arrested.
As you see, the tendency is rather disappointing, but at the same time, the competent bodies make progress on combating counterfeiters. Do they have something to confront those illicit drug manufacturers?
First of all, medical authorities work in close cooperation with the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (or CBP). Once they find something suspicious, it needs to be seized and expertized. Interestingly, the specialists still use visual analysis as one of the main methods of examination. They measure the size and density of the confiscated products and compare them to the original ones. For regular consumers, the illicit products may look like the real ones, but the experts can easily spot counterfeit.
Along with the visual examination, the specialists on fake drugs employ special equipment, such as infrared spectrometry testing and high-performance liquid chromatography. This way they can see all chemical constituents of the tablets, including active and non-active ingredients. Earlier, these tools were available only in laboratories, but nowadays there are handy and mobile instruments that can be used right in the warehouses or pharmacies. Some of the new spectroscopes are powerful enough to read even through the packaging.
Where to Buy Safe Cheap ED Tablets Online?
So, let’s answer the question “what can you do to protect yourself from fraud?” You can buy erection drugs from reputable and trusted online pharmacies, with a long history and a lot of experience. And ViaBestBuy is exactly what you’ve been looking for! If you want to make sure that we sell high-quality medications, you can read the reviews and testimonials from our loyal customers. You can leave a comment, too, and see yourself that everyone is free to write what he thinks is true without any censorship. Honesty is our best policy, and it works in our favor. People can see that we did not pop up yesterday, that we have lots of grateful clients, and most importantly, our drugs really work.
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