Health Group Honors Times’ Black Market Medicine Series

“Dangerous Medicine: On the Trail of Black Market Drugs,” a three-part series by a team of Times reporters, has won the Pan American Health Organization’s Award for Excellence in International Health Reporting.

The newspaper’s three-month investigation revealed Latino immigrants’ risky practice of medicating themselves with illegal and often deadly Mexican prescription drugs sold in black market stores, swap meets and clinics in Orange and Los Angeles counties.

Many of the drugs are banned or restricted in the United States, but multinational drug companies are allowed to sell them in Mexico because of more permissive drug laws. The medicines are then smuggled into this country.

Times reporters followed the trail of the dangerous drugs from Mexico to Southern California, chronicling how ill-trained pharmacists at the U.S.-Mexico border sell Mexican drugs to U.S. residents without prescriptions and how unscrupulous doctors conspire with smugglers to sneak millions of dollars in illegal drugs into the country every week.

Once in the United States, the medicines are sold at high markups by business owners and unlicensed medical providers to immigrants who cannot afford licensed health care.

The Times reporters who worked on the project were Tracy Weber and H.G. Reza in Orange County, James F. Smith in Mexico City and Julie Marquis in Los Angeles. Photographer Alex Garcia, graphics reporter Brady MacDonald and graphics artists Raoul Ranoa and Paul Duginski also worked on the series.