Fake Viagra not the way to a good time

Fake Viagra not the way to a good time

A little diamond-shaped blue pill has brought a new lease on
life for many men -- and their partners -- since it was launched
two years ago. But Viagra's phenomenal success in treating
erectile dysfunction has inevitably drawn con artists who are
touting fake products as aphrodisiacs on Jakarta's streets. The
Jakarta Post's Bruce Emond and Maria Endah
Hulupi look at the business of selling a good time.

JAKARTA (JP): As the setting sun basks the city in a
flickering glow, droves of medicine hawkers emerge from their
daytime cocoons to set up shop for a busy night ahead.

They park their loaded pushcarts at distances of a few meters
from each other in areas such as Bendungan Hilir, Jl. Pramuka and
Senen, Central Jakarta, Jatinegara market, East Jakarta, and Daan
Mogot, West Jakarta.

But their happiest hunting ground is in the entertainment belt
of Jl. Gajah Mada and Jl. Hayam Wuruk in the city's Chinatown.
The area's discos, nightclubs, restaurants and hotels pulsate
with life until the sun comes up.

All that partying can take its toll, and the medicine hawkers
are at the ready with over-the-counter and prescription drugs,
toiletries and condoms.

For those who need some oomph after a long night of living it
up, there are also aphrodisiacs.

And the big seller these days is Viagra -- or what passes for
it.

"Aris," who operates outside a high school in the area, offers
a whole range of "Viagra" products, from pills to capsules to
sprays.

"This is the best grade and costs Rp 135,000 each," he said as
he took a grayish-blue tablet out of a box. The "second" grade,
which he got from another vendor, was placed in a small blue-and-
white box marked Pfizer, the manufacturer of Viagra, with a
hologram and batch number on the cover.

Cheapest of all are his capsules, with a box of six selling
for Rp 25,000, and spray oil for Rp 40,000. Their crude
packaging, the garbled English of their pamphlets and the
inclusion of a pornographic game card were enough to give them
away as fakes.

Aris said the products were supplied by a dealer who was on
"standby" in the area during the night for whenever the hawkers
ran out of the drugs.

Despite the higher price, the "top grade" pills, Aris said,
were the best seller among his customers, who he described as
well-off "working people".

Genuine

To the layperson, it would be hard to tell the difference
between the blue-and-white Viagra packaging sold by Aris and the
genuine article.

But Shanti Shamdasani, senior public affairs manager for PT
Pfizer Indonesia, has seen it all before: The "Pfizer" in the
hologram is slightly the wrong shape, the bar code is upside down
and the Viagra logo is missing.

The "top grade" pill, tested in the company's laboratory in
Bogor, turned out to contain about 60 percent sildenafil citrate,
the active ingredient in Viagra (the inside of a genuine Viagra
pill is white, while a fake pill is usually blue).

There was no reason to take a second look at the capsules and
spray oil, because Viagra is only produced in pill form. The
capsule contained a brownish powder which the lab was unable to
identify.

"In the past we've found capsules containing vitamin B and
others filled with Johnson's baby powder, which obviously people
should not be ingesting," Shanti said.

Yet it is little wonder that Viagra, which costs about Rp
95,000 per 100 mg pill at pharmacies, is a prime target for
counterfeiters.

The Index of Medical Specialties, a medical consultancy on the
pharmaceutical industry in the country, reports it is now the
most commonly prescribed drug in Indonesia for erectile
dysfunction, used in treating men with causes either
physiological, such as constricted blood flow to the genitals
from diabetes, hypertension or other conditions, or
psychological, such as depression.

What concerns Pfizer is how the drug has become considered a
miraculous cure-all for whatever ails you in the bedroom -- and a
party drug to put someone in the mood.

With an explosion in illegal drug use in the 1990s combined
with the traditional practice of self-medication and using
aphrodisiacs, such as jamu (herbal concoctions), and poor
consumer education, the country has proved a fertile ground for
the proliferation of fake Viagra, as well as the genuine product
being sold illegally on the black market. Apart from street
hawkers, they are reportedly being offered in bars, discos,
cafes, fitness centers, even on golf courses for men at the end
of a round on the links.

"We've even heard of salesgirls going around the city offering
it to men, and of executives bidding on a tender who offer a
Viagra and a woman to officials making the decision," Shanti
said.

When the drug is advertised, either directly or through
euphemistic terms of "the magic blue pill" and "V", the firm
takes the action of formally informing the media involved that
Viagra is only available by prescription and that its
advertisement is thus illegal.

But Shanti acknowledged the firm had limited success working
with the police in stopping the sale of fake Viagra, most of
which is believed to originate in Australia and New Zealand.

Now Pfizer is taking its message to the public, including
through seminars, as it tries to educate people that consuming
fake Viagra has the potential to hurt their health and
pocketbook.

"Viagra is not an aphrodisiac, and it won't work on systems
that don't need it. And we're concerned that people will become
ill from using the fake drugs, which will mean they are spending
money on something they don't need -- and then will have to spend
more on their recovery."