How Do Officials Test if Drugs Are Counterfeit or Not?

Milena McLaughlin, PharmD, MSc, Assistant Professor, Pharmacy Practice, Midwestern University and Northwestern Memorial Hospital, explains how officials test if a drug is counterfeit or active.

Interview Transcript (slightly modified for readability):

“They’ll take a tablet and break it in half and actually rub it across [a] card, and then put that in water, and they can actually see, based on a reaction and the colors that come up on the card, if it’s actually an active medication or not. And so, that can tell them if there’s an active drug in the tablet. However, it can’t tell them how much active drug is in the tablet, so they’re also working on seeing quantitatively how much drug is in there as well.”