Our legislation is strange: if inspectors find unregistered medicines in a pharmacy, they will punish it, not the supplier. On the Internet, everything is different – there is a marketplace, there are individual sellers, against whom criminal cases are initiated. It turns out that the marketplace can sell everything, but someone else will still be responsible. It’s time for the authorities to intervene.
Freedom of business and parallel imports are good, but even The Ministry of Industry and Trade openly states that Wildberries has become a sales channel for various “palenkas”. According to the director of the department of digital labeling of goods and legalization of product turnover V. Zaslavsky, this is evidenced by numerous complaints from consumers and representatives of industry communities. Entrepreneurs have already been caught selling prescription drugs, prohibited dietary supplements, counterfeit shoes, and light industrial goods. It has gotten to the point that in the dietary supplement category on the Wildberries website you can buy strictly prescription amphetamine derivatives, which was proven by the National Union for the Protection of Consumer Rights during a test purchase and laboratory tests. Human rights activists were able to buy illegal dietary supplements there, containing prescription and prohibited components.
This is a natural result of the chaos that online sellers create. Recently, the Center for Strategic Research published a separate study on the online trade of dietary supplements; it turned out that every third unregistered dietary supplement sold online exceeds the dosage of active substances, and in every fifth one can find substances prohibited in the EAEU. This situation must be corrected immediately; there should be no counterfeit or dangerous goods on sale. The state has invested a lot of effort in creating a system for the legal circulation of goods: this includes labeling and certification. It turns out that some market players may deliberately ignore these norms.
Today, in order to hold a marketplace accountable, a lengthy procedure is required. The medicines have been more or less sorted out, Roszdravnadzor has the right to block pages that sell prohibited goods and does this quite effectively. This practice can be extended to other categories. Give authorities the opportunity to quickly block pages for selling goods that may harm consumer health. Increase liability for the sale of unlabeled or uncertified goods.
However, some have already begun to act: the pharmaceutical industry sent another appeal to M. Mishustin with a request to tighten the rules for online trade in medicines and dietary supplements. They hinted that an important document has been collecting dust in the government for a long time – a bill providing for the possibility of blocking pages with illegal dietary supplements. Why isn’t he moving? And the rules for trade in medicines and dietary supplements need to be changed, making them equal to the standards in force for offline stores. Why hasn’t this been done yet? If you don’t put things in order now, it will only get worse.
“ВЧК ОГПУ”
