Adulteration of drugs

Adulteration is defined as admixture or substitution of original or genuine drug with inferior, defective or otherwise useless or harmful substances.

ADULTRANT: The adulterant must be some material which in both cheap and available in fairly large amounts.

1. Intentional (Deliberate) adulteration

2. Accidental (In-deliberate) adulteration  

Intentional adulteration – Are normally commercial mainly with the intention of enhancement of profits.

1. Scarcity of the drug

2. The high price of the drug in the market, eg: Clove, Cinnamon, Cardamom

3. It is very common with the contraband drugs e.g. Opium

The term ‘adulteration’ or debasement of an article covers a number of conditions, which may be deliberate or accidental.

Inferiority: It is a natural substandard condition (e.g. where a crop is taken whose natural constituent is below the minimum standard for that particular drug) which can be avoided by more careful selection of the plant material.

Spoilage: Spoilage is a substandard condition produced by microbial or other pest infestation, which makes a product unfit for consumption, which can be avoided by careful attention to the drying, and storage conditions.

Deterioration: Deterioration is an impairment of the quality or value of an article due to destruction or abstraction of valuable constituents by bad treatment or aging or to the deliberate extraction of the constituents and the sale of the residue as the original drugs.

Admixture: Admixture is the addition of one article to another through accident, ignorance or carelessness e.g. inclusion of soil on an underground organ or the co-collection of two similar species.

Sophistication: Sophistication is the deliberate addition of spurious or inferior material with intent to defraud; such materials are carefully produced and may appear at first sight to be genuine e.g. powder ginger may be diluted with starch with addition of little coloring material to give the correct shade of yellow colour.

Substitution: Substitution is the addition of an entirely different article in place of that which is required e.g. supply of cheap cottonseed oil in place of olive oil.