Government Difficult to Stop Hazardous Drugs
Wednesday, 06 December, 2006 | 17:29 WIB

TEMPO Interactive, Jakarta: The Food and Drug Control Agency (POM) cannot stop the distribution of all traditional drugs that contain hazardous chemicals despite, from laboratory testing results this year, the agency found 93 kinds of drugs are not good to be consumed . “Because, most are sold at small stalls,” said Ruslan Aspan, Deputy of Traditional Drugs, Cosmetics and Products Monitoring, after a press conference yesterday (5/12).


Officers who monitored the drugs said they have spread to include Semarang, Yogyakarta, Manado, Medan, Palembang, Makassar, Pekanbaru, Surabaya and Jambi. However, this year the POM Agency only destroyed 10,561 boxes, 31,403 packs and 1,968 capsules of the traditional drugs.

The 93 kinds of drugs contain one out of eight substances: metampiron (pain killer), fenilbutason (pain killer), deksametason (to gain weight), allupurinol (anti-asthma), CTM (anti-allergy), sildenafil sitrat ( stimulator), sibutramin hidroklorida (to cut down appetite), and parasetamol (to ease body temperature).

All of these can be consumed with a doctor’s approval. Or else, the drugs can worsen the disease and even cause death. The drugs are for uric acid, weight gain, weight loss, stiff muscles, eczema, and stimulating the sex drive.

For the reason that production and distribution are difficult to stop, the POM Agency prohibited the public from buying and consuming 93 kinds out of 8,000 traditional drugs that were tested.

Purwanto and Zaky Al Mubarok