Cubanet, Miriam Celaya, Havana, 1 January 2018 — On 28 December 2017, the newspaper Granma published an extensive article that uncovers a serious criminal act: the adulteration of drugs detected in the Reinaldo Gutiérrez pharmaceutical laboratory, located in the municipality of Boyeros, in the Cuban capital, with the substitution of methylphenidate bya placebo, the latter an innocuous product “used for the cleaning of the machines once each production of medicines is conculded.”
The information is based on a report delivered to Granma by the Information and Analysis Department of the Attorney General’s Office, and includes a brief reference to a list of criminal acts detected during 2017, related to the theft and illicit trade in drugs in different entities subordinated to the Superior Organization of Business Management (OSDE) BioCubaFarma, with their corresponding criminal proceedings, without going into much detail.
However, in the case of the aforementioned laboratory, the scapegoats that usually accompany this type of news in the government media are mentioned, namely, a team leader in charge of the blister-packing machine, an operator, a shift manager and “stevedores of the provincial pharmaceutical retail company in the East” – that is, only the basic personnel directly related to the production process or to the handling and transportation of drugs – whom, it is affirmed, “received sums of cash totaling over 1,500 CUC.”
An insignificant figure, especially if you take into account a simple fact not mentioned by Fariñas Rodríguez in his article, but which is of major importance because of its implications: methylphenidate is a synthetic psychostimulant substance – that is, a drug – that raises the levels of dopamine and norepinephrine in the central nervous system. Because of its molecular structure, methylphenidate is similar to amphetamines, but its effects – which start approximately 30 minutes after the pill is ingested and last for several hours – are analogous to those of cocaine, although less powerful.
Thus, these criminals would extract, not the raw material of, say, the dypirones, the hypotensives or the diuretics – medicines that are scarce and in great demand among the population – but “coincidentally” a psychotropic substance… But the journalists, (piously?) overlook that detail. Could it be that on this Day of the Holy Innocents the official Cuban press tries to pull the wool over our eyes? Is it a question of deceiving the national public opinion by concealing what is clearly an illegal drug trade, that is, a drug trafficking network within the Island?
Undoubtedly, the official Cuban press is like fine lingerie: what it insinuates is much more interesting and attractive than what it really shows. The rest of the article leads into other administrative considerations, the kind absolutely not commented on in Granma, which should imply criminal consequences for others, much higher than those thugs trapped in the case and pointed out in the same old article.
So that the reader is immersed in an ocean of questions and many concerns.
Let us put forward some questions that emanate from this published article – not by the enemy press or by the spokesmen of the Empire to distort reality and damage the Revolution – but precisely by the official organ of the Communist Party of Cuba:
- It is obvious that (at least) at the aforementioned laboratory there is no adequate control over raw materials, including those that constitute a strong potential for the development of an underground drug market in Cuba, with all that this implies;
- Adequate quality control is not carried out with systematic and thorough randomized examinations of the batches of medicines produced in the laboratory, since indeterminate quantities of placebo went to the retail network, instead of the tablets with the appropriate components;
- The technological records of pharmaceutical laboratories can easily be violated by unscrupulous people working in this industry;
- The machinery of the laboratory is capable of being used at will by operators and other workers;
- There is no effective surveillance system on the production process despite the fact that psychostimulants substances are handled which – as it is informally known – are beginning to flood many neighborhoods and very crowded areas of the Cuban capital.
At this point, it begs the question: what guarantees are there that these and other violations are not being committed in other laboratories, including the production of drugs that are exported to other countries? Who can the parents of the children make claims to, since – according to the article –children were consuming adulterated tablets, ineffective for their illnesses? How serious and reliable can the certifications be that guarantee the production of medicines in Cuba?
How long will there be an inexcusable irresponsibility for all managers of the pharmaceutical industry and other officials related to it, from those closest to the production process up to the new president of BioCubaFarma, Mr. Eduardo Martínez Díaz and the Minister of Public Health, Dr. Roberto Morales Ojeda?
Is anyone really thinking that “the training of personnel, the sense of belonging, the ethical and moral values and political-ideological development” will be effective strategies to eradicate the crimes that in the article are euphemistically called “extraordinary events”?
Surely without meaning to, these correspondents of Granma have put their finger on a sore that, if they think about it, they might have preferred to leave hidden, because the truth is that the decay of today’s Cuban reality is so widespread and uncontrollable that it is impossible to be able to uncover a fraction of it without exposing a barrage of corruption that will splash even the most egregious feet when the crap hits the fan.
They have opened another Pandora’s box that, with all certainty, will have some sequels… perhaps some of which were not foreseen. They are the risks of the profession, even for those who exclude the commitment to the truth in order to prostrate themselves at the feet of ideologies.
Translated by Norma Whiting
