That Pill You Pay A Lot for In The U.S. Likely Was Made In China

By Joe Rothstein

Among the first alerts warning how the coronavirus in China might affect those of us living in the U.S. was the threat to our prescription drug supply chain. Prescription drugs? From China? Hmm. That likely came as a surprise to most Americans who have been warned for years not to buy drugs produced outside the country.

The fact is, 80 percent of the U.S. supply of antibiotics are made in China, as is about half of our penicillin, 91 percent of our hydrocortisone and 70 percent of the pain reliever acetaminophen. Most prescribed generic drugs are manufactured in China. China is the world’s largest producer of active pharmaceutical ingredients.

Here’s another fact that may surprise you — China’s pharmaceutical industry is not effectively regulated by the Chinese government. That has resulted in significant drug scandals over the years. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration does try to monitor Chinese drug manufacturing, but Congress hasn’t seen fit to budget much money for those inspections and the U.S. inspectors who are there get little cooperation from Beijing.

The Chinese may be making our life-saving medications, but it’s the giant drug companies that call the manufacturing shots. Check out their annual reports to their shareholders and you will see how proud the companies are of their foreign installations. Pfizer, for instance, has 16 of them in China. Pfizer’s web site as I write this has dozens of major job openings in China in their manufacturing and quality…