[4] Compiled from: Red Star News
 
[2] On September 28, 2022, the Yibin City Public Security Bureau, Xuzhou District Public Security Sub-Bureau, Xuzhou District Procuratorate, and Xuzhou District Court jointly reported a counterfeit drug case involving 31 provinces across the country, with an涉案金额 of 210 million yuan.

 
 

[3] On June 14, 2023, the Xuzhou District People's Court of Yibin City, Sichuan Province, released trial information on the "Jiulong Traditional Chinese Medicine Pills" counterfeit drug case: the defendant Chen was sentenced to 14 years in prison and fined 124 million yuan for the crime of producing and selling counterfeit drugs; the other six defendants were sentenced to three to six and a half years in prison and corresponding supplementary penalties for the crime of producing or selling counterfeit drugs.
 
 
Case review
[4] The court report showed that in May 2017, defendant Chen rented a house and hired workers to produce the drugs "Jiulong Traditional Chinese Medicine Pills" and "Jiulong Traditional Chinese Medicine Pills". In June 2020, defendants Deng and others, under Chen's arrangement, mixed various Western medicines such as dexamethasone, nafoxidine tablets, acetaminophen tablets, and phenylbutazone with jianqu and fennel in a certain proportion according to the "recipe" provided by Chen, crushed them with a grinder, mixed them with flour to make granular pills, then packed the pills into bags labeled "Jiulong Traditional Chinese Medicine Pills" (100 pills per bag, plus two plasters), and packaged them in plastic handbags at a standard of 50 bags per bundle.
 
[5] Defendant Chen passed off the "Jiulong Traditional Chinese Medicine Pills" as traditional Chinese medicine, selling them through a real-name verified WeChat account at a price of 100 yuan per bag, and bound corresponding bank cards to collect payments; Chen sent buyer information to couriers via WeChat, arranging defendants Zhao and others to transport the packaged "Jiulong Traditional Chinese Medicine Pills" to postal express points by car, sending them nationwide by express delivery. Later, according to an accounting firm's appraisal, the total amount of Chen's production and sale of "Jiulong Traditional Chinese Medicine Pills" exceeded 73.62 million yuan.
 
[6] The market supervision bureau determined that chemical drug ingredients such as aspirin, prednisone acetate, acetaminophen, diclofenac sodium, and phenylbutazone were detected in the "Jiulong Traditional Chinese Medicine Pills" produced and sold by defendants Chen and others, but the publicly promoted raw material ingredients were traditional Chinese medicine, which constituted passing off one type of drug as another, legally classified as counterfeit drugs.
 
The Xuzhou District People's Court of Yibin City comprehensively considered the criminal circumstances of each defendant, their roles in the criminal organization, and their attitudes toward confession, and rendered a judgment according to law. Defendant Chen was sentenced to 14 years in prison and fined 124 million yuan for the crime of producing and selling counterfeit drugs. The other six defendants were sentenced to fixed-term imprisonment ranging from three years to six years and six months, along with corresponding supplementary penalties, for the crime of producing counterfeit drugs or selling counterfeit drugs.
 
 
《[1] The People's Republic of China刑法》
Article 141 [Crime of Producing and Selling Counterfeit Drugs]
Whoever produces or sells counterfeit drugs shall be sentenced to fixed-term imprisonment of not more than three years or criminal detention, and shall also be fined; if it causes serious harm to human health or has other serious circumstances, the sentence shall be fixed-term imprisonment of not less than three years but not more than ten years, and a fine.
If it causes death or has other particularly serious circumstances, the sentence shall be fixed-term imprisonment of not less than ten years, life imprisonment, or death, and a fine or confiscation of property. The term "counterfeit drugs" as used in this Article refers to drugs and non-drugs that are classified as counterfeit drugs or treated as counterfeit drugs under the provisions of the Drug Administration Law of the People's Republic of China.
 
 
[1] The author's perspective
In this case, the drugs were sold via the internet and delivered by mail, making the criminal methods covert, but with strong transmission power and influence, resulting in serious social harm.
 
Due to the limitations of medical technology, many diseases cannot be completely cured at present. Taking advantage of this, criminals labeled the outer packaging of traditional Chinese medicine bags with claims of treating headaches, dizziness, rheumatoid arthritis, and other diseases, deliberately catering to the psychology of patients who have sought ineffective treatment or suffered from long-term illness, thereby seeking illegal profits. In this case, the criminals precisely targeted the elderly who believed in miraculous drug effects and thought that pure traditional Chinese medicine had fewer side effects, leading them to consider buying and trying. This also serves as a reminder to consumers to remain vigilant in daily life, not to believe in false advertisements such as "ancestral secret formulas," and to purchase drugs from regular pharmacies and hospitals to ensure medication safety.