Bristol-Myers Truck Heist Shows Big Pharma Does Not Have Crime Under Control

An unmarked Bristol-Myers Squibb (BMY) truck filled with several million dollars of drugs was hijacked from a Florence, Ky., rest stop, underlining (again) the effect of spiralling drug prices during a recession in which 50 million Americans don't have healthcare coverage. Thefts of pharmaceuticals for black market sales are on the rise, according to Barry Conlon, a security executive with FreightWatch International:

... year-to-date, FreightWatch has recorded 27 pharmaceutical theft incidents, with an average loss per shipment of $5.1m, up from $4m in 2009. For comparison the company recorded 46 stolen pharma shipments in 2008, with an average loss value of $1.3m.

OK, so it wasn't the truck robbery scene from the Pacino/De Niro movie Heat, but it was serious nonetheless: The white, unmarked truck was left unattended for about 15 minutes after a crowded parking lot forced the driver to park far from the facility. Stolen products included the antihypertensives Avapro and Avalide, anticoagulant Coumadin, Abilify for schizophrenia, the HIV drug Reyataz and Plavix, an antiplatelet medication. Other recent Rx drug heists include:

A black market drugs ring being run out of GlaxoSmithKline's Paxil factory in Puerto Rico.
Crystal meth dealers targeted CVS for three years because they knew the company had a lax system for monitoring illegal pseudoephedrine sales.
Eli Lilly (LLY) was targeted in a Mission Impossible-style heist in which thieves lowered themselves through the roof of a warehouse in Connecticut to get $75 million of drugs.
Twenty-two people were indicted in "the Ocean's 11 of Meth," a caper in which dealers robbed a Sanofi-Aventis (SNY) psuedoephedrine factory in Kansas City on Super Bowl Sunday, 2007.
About 25,600 Advair Diskus inhalers worth $5 million were stolen from a GSK warehouse and began showing up on pharmacy store shelves via the black market.

Sure, some of these thefts are just illegal drug dealers who need supplies for their addicts. But the bigger ones -- including the recent BMS truck-jacking -- involve legit drugs. It's not a coincidence that the U.S. healthcare system is a target for criminals: With few incentives or mechanisms to lower prices, there is only upward pressure on drug costs, making drugs valuable objects with a high cash value. And with 50 million Americans without healthcare, there's a ready black market for cheap product.

And finally: Importing cheap Rx drugs from Canada for use in the U.S. is illegal. BMS's truck was headed north of the border -- yet another market distortion that keeps U.S. prices higher than everyone else's.

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