GSK cold medicine seized in meth lab busts in Guangdong

Want China Times, Staff Reporter 2014-01-07

A Kangtaike capsule. (Photo/CFP)

British multinational healthcare company GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) has once again found itself in the public eye in China after reports that one of its popular cold medicines has been used as a raw material to manufacture the recreational drug crystal meth, reports Shanghai's China Business News.

Police raided properties in Boshe village in Lufeng, a city in southern China's Guangdong province, confiscating a batch of drugs and raw materials on Dec. 29. Among the haul was the Kangtaike cold medicine series produced by GSK.

The incident is not the first time that Kangtaike has been implicated in methamphetamine production, the paper said, as police have confiscated packs of Kangtaike capsules during drug raids across the country in Shandong, Jiangsu, Hubei and Guangdong.

Boshe has been dubbed China's foremost drug village after a crackdown on several local drug rings, where many housewives and senior citizens were found to be working part-time to make the drugs, earning 300-500 yuan (US$50-$80) a day. The police also found that some local elementary school students were also working at the drug labs during summer or winter vacations, opening Kangtaike capsules and pouring the powder into a container to earn around 10,000 yuan (US$1,650) a month.

At 11.60 yuan (US$1.90) a packet, Kangtaike boasts the largest share in China's over-the-counter cold medicine market, racking up sales of over 500 million yuan (US$82.6 million) a year. It differs from most other cold medicines in the content of PSE, or pseudoephedrine, which is effective in alleviating symptoms of cold, but the chemical can also be a key material in producing methamphetamine. Theoretically, 10 packs of Kangtaike can be converted into three grams of methamphetamine hydrochloride, also known as crystal meth or ice.

Lo Yi, a manager at GSK, said that "While we do not plan to suspend sales of Kangtaike, we are stepping up R&D efforts in revising the formula of the medicine and finding a substitute for PSE."

To stem the abusive use of cold medicines containing PSE, China's State Food and Drug Administration has ruled that they can only be prescribed by doctors.

Figures show that China's cold medicine market has been expanding steadily in recent years, scoring sales of 14.9 billion yuan (US$2.5 billion) in 2011, compared with 7.8 billion yuan (US$1.3 billion) in 2007, representing a 17% compound average growth rate. In 2011, cold medicines accounted for 15% of the retail sales of medicines in China, the second largest, trailing health products at 31.3%, the paper said.

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