Three in the dock for forging Lyrica prescriptions

TDT | Manama

A Bahraini man, aged 31, and two Asian male accomplices, aged 27 and 34, recently stood trial before the Fourth High Criminal Court for charges of forgery and drug abuse. Court files show that the three men were involved in faking 404 prescriptions in order to purchase large quantities of addictive prescription pills commercially known as Lyrica.

The court ordered to view the confiscated fake prescriptions and adjourned the case to tomorrow. It also ordered to assign a defence attorney for the defendants and to keep them in detention. In the Public Prosecution’s interrogation, the first defendant confessed to forging the prescriptions and presenting them to several pharmacies across Bahrain, after falsely claiming that they were issued by the Health Services Directorate in the Interior Ministry.

Investigations showed that eight prescriptions and 70 capsules that were illegally obtained were found in the first defendant’s house. It was also mentioned in the police report that the man was exposed when an inspector from the National Health Regulatory Authority (NHRA) discovered a fake prescription while auditing the operations of one of the pharmacies.

As reported earlier, the Bahrain government has been tightening its grip on dispensing medicines, such as Lyrica, to curb its misuse. This came after reports and footage were widely circulated online claiming that Lyrica is being peddled and misused among school students of both genders in the Kingdom.

On August 1 last year, the NHRA announced that it had closed a pharmacy and suspended its manager for a year, after it was proven that the pharmacy sold Lyrica without a prescription and at higher prices. Additionally, a statement issued following the regular weekly Cabinet meeting last September mentioned that it had approved a draft edict on the procedures for regulating the dispensing of medicines containing substances listed under the pharmaceutical group gabapentinoid, to which drugs such as Lyrica belong. It was added in the statement that the move comes out of the Cabinet’s keenness to place more procedures to control the dispensing of medicines and reduce their misuse.