Falsified medicines in a multicultural society. Importance of knowledge exchange between the public and expertise

Medicines are products that most people worldwide come into contact with sometime in life. They are an obvious and rarely questioned element in existence. Against this background, the spread of counterfeit medicines is particularly problematic and involves extensive health risks to the individual. The consequences are, in the long run, high medical costs and other social costs in the form of increased burden on the judiciary. Falsified medicines and drugs are sold through intermediaries that are not authorized e.g. on the Internet or in stores / markets where permits are missing. They bring significantly higher sums of money than global illicit drug crime.

In the proposed study we take the basis of Swedish society. It may be close to hand thinking that the problem with false medicines is a marginal phenomenon in Sweden. It's not like that. First of all, we ask the question of the extent to which individuals' social and cultural experiences of access to medicine may affect the attitude towards how medicines are to be procured. Which similarities or differences show different social and ethnic groups regarding their attitude to how medicines should be procured? We also want to investigate the possibilities for implementation, that is, how our results can be used as a basis for spreading knowledge to the public about wise drug/medicine handling. We want to investigate three different groups in Swedish society that are in the age range 9-12 years, so-called tweens.

Medicines are products that most people worldwide come into contact with sometime in life. They are an obvious and rarely questioned element in existence. Against this background, the spread of counterfeit medicines is particularly problematic and involves extensive health risks to the individual. The consequences are, in the long run, high medical costs and other social costs in the form of increased burden on the judiciary. Falsified medicines and drugs are sold through intermediaries that are not authorized e.g. on the Internet or in stores / markets where permits are missing. They bring significantly higher sums of money than global illicit drug crime.

In the proposed study we take the basis of Swedish society. It may be close to hand thinking that the problem with false medicines is a marginal phenomenon in Sweden. It's not like that. First of all, we ask the question of the extent to which individuals' social and cultural experiences of access to medicine may affect the attitude towards how medicines are to be procured. Which similarities or differences show different social and ethnic groups regarding their attitude to how medicines should be procured? We also want to investigate the possibilities for implementation, that is, how our results can be used as a basis for spreading knowledge to the public about wise drug/medicine handling. We want to investigate three different groups in Swedish society that are in the age range 9-12 years, so-called tweens.