Pressed pills are counterfeit pills. And they are everywhere. If you are unfamiliar with them than you and I had something in common. We have all read about cash-only pill mills run by pain clinics. And individual crimes committed by those feeding an addiction: raided medicine cabinets, falsified prescriptions, doctor-shopping and faked injuries. But prescription pills no longer need to be hunted down because counterfeit ones can be delivered right to you. It’s an incredibly lucrative business. Consider that in the first seven months of 2020 the Minnesota DEA confiscated 46,000 counterfeit pills. That computes to 80K pills a year – in Minnesota – hardly a state known for its drug activity! If we were to use that same number and conservatively apply it to all 50 states, 4 million pills would have been confiscated. 4 million. Keep in mind that the police can’t find them all. Odds are there are upwards of 20 million illegal pills flooding our streets every year.

And most of us know nothing about it.

So what is a pressed, or counterfeit pill? They are pharmaceutical imposters made by drug dealers instead of lab technicians. They look exactly like the real thing in color, size, shape and feel. They even mimic the imprint code found on authentic medications. They look so real police are routinely fooled; unless you are transporting buckets of them in the backseat of your truck you are going to get by just fine – even if pulled over and asked to turn your pockets inside out.

But here’s the bigger problem: they are not what they purport to be. Pressed Adderall is comprised of methamphetamine, crack and speed; Xanax of ammonia, rat poison and fentanyl and Ecstasy of ketamine, bath salts and morphine. They may not be what you were originally shopping for, but they will get you high; and in doing so flood your bloodstream with highly addictive, highly deadly, substances.

How are they made? With a simple $500 investment on a pill press and pill mold. Equipment that is easily found on the internet. The profit on such an investment is six figures.* It’s no wonder it’s a burgeoning underground marketplace.

It’s seriously depressing. It is so monumentally hard to get ahead of the illegal drug trade. When one door closes (cutting back on the over prescribing of legal meds) another one opens.

I think back to a party I attended in 1984 at Vanderbilt University. I was a freshman experiencing my first frat party. It was wild. The music was blasting and the rooms pulsated with purple light. A few men wove their way through the crowd carrying large silver trays littered with pills. Pills of every color and size – free for the taking. I stuck to my beer. But plenty of others picked from the tray.

Here too one can get seriously depressed contemplating the ever widening scope of the problem. Yes, those pills pose a danger to those actively seeking them, but also to those who do not.

Richard Salter of Omaha’s DEA agency warns, “Please educate your high school and college-age kids on the extreme dangers of counterfeit medications, too often the overdose victims are young and are not prior drug abusers. They went to a party and someone offered them a pill to relax them – then they died. Too many American parents have had to bury their children as a result of drug overdose.” **

And so you have it: today’s public service announcement.

*March 2019 NABP, NADDI, and PSM
** DEA, Press Releases 8/12/20

*March 2019 NABP, NADDI, and PSM
** DEA, Press Releases 8/12/20