Price-sensitive rural residents easily exploited

SELLING MEDICINES that have passed their expiry date has become a profitable business in the countryside. ThePaper.cn comments:

It is estimated that about 15,000 tons of medicines in China pass their expiry dates without being used. But there is not yet a system for collecting them for proper disposal. Some people throw them away as general garbage, which poses direct threat to the environment as most garbage ends up as landfill. But some expired medicines find their way into rural clinics and drugstores, where the supervision over medicines and farmers' awareness of the potential risks are weaker.

Some of the medicines are repackaged with newly printed fake labels, and some are directly sold to the rural users at lower prices, which appeals to rural consumers, who are more price-sensitive.