The U.S. is key to global counterfeiting and no alt causes to terrorist financing.

The growing danger of counterfeit pharmaceuticals is well understood to pose a serious challenge to the health of North Americans (see Box 2), yet public health is not the only consequence of this sinister crime. Counterfeiters also work to evade legitimate taxation and quality controls. They threaten to destroy corporate brands and undermine public confidence in health infrastructures. Perhaps most distressingly, growing evidence suggests that these crimes are increasingly linked to criminal syndicates whose activities range from petty crimes to global terrorism. In short, the lucrative nature of counterfeiting threatens to feed larger and even more insidious criminal and terrorist activities in the United States and around the world.

These concerns go beyond the specious claims that terrorists may use the US drug supply to introduce poisons or biological agents to the homeland. Rather, these criminal entities are using the funds derived from counterfeiting indirectly to support their extremist and often violent activities around the globe. This trend is in keeping with a growing sophistication of terrorists and criminal networks that exploit the forces of globalization, such as a well-developed supply chain, in an effort to support their local, national, and even international operations. Examples in the sphere of proliferation of arms—both weapons of mass destruction and small arms—include individuals such as Viktor Bout and A.Q. Khan, who managed illicit international proliferation networks and shipping arms or materials to build them to the highest bidder worldwide. The increased focus on the counterfeit drugs industry by non-state actors is also a result, in part, of successful international efforts to cut off traditional sources of revenue to terrorist organizations.