The Illegal Trade of Medicines on Social Media: Evaluating Situational Crime Prevention Measures

122 Pages·2020·2.466 MB·English

by  Gabriele Baratto

SPRINGER BRIEFS IN CRIMINOLOGY
Gabriele Baratto
The Illegal Trade
of Medicines
on Social Media
Evaluating
Situational Crime
Prevention Measures
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Gabriele Baratto
The Illegal Trade
of Medicines on Social
Media
Evaluating Situational Crime Prevention
Measures
Gabriele Baratto
Faculty of Law
University of Trento
Trento, Italy
ISSN 2192-8533 ISSN 2192-8541 (electronic)
SpringerBriefs in Criminology
ISBN 978-3-030-57581-6 ISBN 978-3-030-57582-3 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-57582-3
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Contents
1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
2 The Illegal Trade of Medicines: The Roles of the Internet
and Social Media Websites . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
2.1 The Illegal Trade of Medicines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
2.1.1 Extent of the Problem . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
2.1.2 Definitions Used in This Research . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
2.2 The Role of the Internet in the Illegal Trade of Medicines . . . . . . . 12
2.2.1 Most Popular ITMs Online . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
2.2.2 The Demand Side of ITMs Online. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
2.2.3 The Supply Side of ITMs Online . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
2.3 The Role of Social Media in the Illegal Online Trade
of Medicines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
2.3.1 The Emerging Role of Social Media in Illegal
Markets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
2.3.2 Illegal Online Trade of Medicines and Social Media:
State of the Art . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
2.3.3 What Is Known About the Role of Social Media . . . . . . . . 24
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
3 Situational Crime Prevention Measures in the Illegal Online
Trade of Medicines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
3.1 Situational Crime Prevention (SCP) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
3.1.1 SCP Theoretical Framework . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
3.1.2 SCP Measures for Crime Reduction and Their
Evaluation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
3.2 SCP Measures in the Illegal Online Trade of Medicines . . . . . . . . . 40
3.2.1 Traditional SCP Measures in the Illegal Online Trade
of Medicines. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
3.2.2 Problems and Lacks with Traditional SCP Measures . . . . . 43
3.3 SCP Measures Tailored on Social Media . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
vii
viii Contents
3.3.1 Identifying Possible SCP Measures in the Case
of Social Media . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
3.3.2 A Promising SCP Measure Implemented by Social
Media Websites . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
3.3.3 The Need for an Assessment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50
4 Research Objective and Methodology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
4.1 Research Objective . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
4.2 Research Methodology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
4.2.1 Overview of the Evaluation Research Designs . . . . . . . . . . 57
4.2.2 Evaluation Research Design Used in This Research . . . . . . 59
4.2.3 Methodology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
4.2.4 Research Limitations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66
5 Evaluation Results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
5.1 Vertical Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70
5.1.1 Twitter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70
5.1.2 Facebook . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76
5.1.3 Instagram . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82
5.2 Horizontal Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88
5.2.1 Extent of the Social Media Usage in the Illegal Online
Trade of Medicines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88
5.2.2 Ease of Finding ITMs on Social Media . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89
5.2.3 Visibility Over Time of ITM-Related Contents
on Social Media . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90
5.2.4 Types of ITMs Advertised and Sold in Social Media . . . . . 92
5.2.5 Language of Posts in Social Media Concerning ITMs . . . . 93
5.2.6 Types of Social Media Posts Concerning ITMs . . . . . . . . . 94
5.3 Overall Impact Assessment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97
6 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101
Appendix: Number of Social Media Contents Analysed . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103
Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111
Chapter 1
Introduction
The illegal trade of medicines is a very dangerous, illegal market that has acquired
in the last two decades an international dimension (Di Nicola, Martini, & Baratto,
2015). Even if it is impossible to quantify its size precisely, it is estimated to be,
globally, a business of at least $75 billion a year (Jackson, 2009; World Health
Organisation, 2012). Solely within Europe, this illegal market has grown 90% in the
last decade, with business amounting to more than €10 billion a year (Wajsman,
Arias Burgos, & Davies, 2016). The illegal distribution of dangerous medicines var-
ies a lot depending on the area of the world taken into consideration. In underdevel-
oped/developing countries, illegal products enter easily into the legal supply chain:
for this reason, it is possible to find dangerous pharmaceuticals everywhere, even in
‘brick and mortar’ pharmacies. On the contrary, in western countries the legal sup-
ply chain is essentially safe because of effective control policies set by national
authorities (Bate, 2012). However, some cases of infiltration occur, mainly due to
the vulnerabilities of the so-called parallel trade (Hall & Antonopoulos, 2016;
Liang, 2006; Muckenfuß, 2017). This term refers to a (legal) practice in which trad-
ers make profits by exploiting price differentials among states, i.e. by purchasing
pharmaceutical products in countries in which they are cheaper and re-exporting
them in other countries at a higher price (Hall & Antonopoulos, 2016).1 Parallel
trade operations present complex processes (importing, re-importing, re-packaging/
re-labelling, and re-selling), steps (with the involvement of several traders and inter-
mediaries), and routes of transport in numerous countries which generates difficul-
ties for national authorities and opportunities for offenders to infiltrate the legal
1 Parallel trade has to be considered a legal business practice in virtue of EU free movement of
goods principle, as also recognised by the European Court of Justice in 1976 (Hall & Antonopoulos,
2016; IRACM, 2013). Today, parallel trade is very common and lucrative: the price of a medicine
may vary by 20% to 50% from one member state to another, and parallel traders are able to earn a
margin of at least 10–15% (IRACM, 2013). In this system, medicines are traded outside the distri-
bution network of the manufacturers and against their interests (Hall & Antonopoulos, 2016).
© The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 1
G. Baratto, The Illegal Trade of Medicines on Social Media, SpringerBriefs in
Criminology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-57582-3_1
2 1 Introduction
supply chain with illicit products (Muckenfuß, 2017). For instance, in some cases
during the transportation processes, genuine pharmaceuticals have been substituted
or bulked out with other dangerous medicines (Hall & Antonopoulos, 2016).2 Even
if worrisome, in western countries the presence of illicit medicines in the legal dis-
tribution chain has to be considered marginal, and dangerous products reach con-
sumers mainly via alternative channels, especially online. The European Union is
particularly threatened by this phenomenon (Mackey and Liang, 2011), and it is
estimated that the illegal online trade of medicines is increasing by 15% each year
(Euractiv, 2013).
In the last few years, several criminological studies have been carried out on this
issue as highlight the functioning of this illegal online market (among others,
Antonopoulos & Hall, 2016; Di Nicola, Martini, & Baratto, 2015; Hall &
Antonopoulos, 2016; Hall, Koenraadt, & Antonopoulos, 2017; Koenraadt & van de
Ven, 2018). Scholars have focused their attention predominately on the most wide-
spread virtual channel used by criminal entrepreneurs to distribute their dangerous
products to customers, i.e. illegal online pharmacies that are e-commerce websites
selling their products to clients via shipping companies or postal services. The num-
ber of illegal online pharmacies active on the web is impressive, especially if com-
pared to websites operating legally. Indeed, it is estimated that from 40,000 to
50,000 online retailers are active on the Internet and 93–96% of them operate ille-
gally (Catizone, 2017; Isles, 2017; LegitScript, 2016; Mackey & Nayyar, 2016).
However, illegal online pharmacies are not the only virtual channel used by
offenders in the distribution of illegal products. Among them, a particular reference
should be made to social media websites, i.e. interactive and web-based technolo-
gies and platforms where members can create and share information and contents of
different types – such as texts, photos, videos, hyperlinks, etc. – communicate
among each other, discuss, and generally interact with each other (Kietzmann,
Hermkens, McCarthy, & Silvestre, 2011). The potential of social media has been
exploited not only by legitimate operators in conducting their businesses but also by
criminal entrepreneurs. In this context, while many authors suggested that offenders
are now using social media platforms to advertise and to trade medicines illegally
just, e.g. (Bachhuber & Merchant, 2017; Di Nicola, Martini, & Baratto, 2015; Hall
et al., 2017; Katsuki, Mackey, & Cuomo, 2015; Lee et al., 2017; Liang & Mackey,
2012; Mackey & Kalyanam, 2017; Richards & Hudson, 2016), very few scientific
contributions have deeply analysed this issue, especially from a criminological
perspective.
2 For further information, please see, among others, Hall & Antonopoulos, 2016; IRACM, 2013;
and Liang, 2006. Beside the vulnerabilities exploited by offenders to infiltrate the legal distribution
chain with illicit medicines, parallel trade presents other relevant issues. Above all, it is creating
shortages in supply within member states in which medicines costs less, since it is more convenient
for traders to re-export pharmaceuticals to other states at a higher price: for instance, patients in
Greece and Italy have limited access to certain pharmaceuticals since they are usually re-exported,
via the parallel trade, to Germany and the United Kingdom (Glynn, 2009; Hall & Antonopoulos,
2016; Morgan, 2008; Socialfarma, 2018).