Radio Chips Will Track Medicines

The makers of the impotency drug Viagra and the painkiller OxyContin said Monday that they would add radio transmitters to bottles of their pills to fight counterfeiting.

The technology will allow the medicines to be tracked electronically from production plant to pharmacy, a development the Food and Drug Administration said was an important tool to combat the small but growing problem of drug counterfeiting.

The devices will be part of the large bottles that manufacturers ship to drug stores and wholesalers, not the containers that consumers get from their pharmacies. Most counterfeiting occurs in the wholesale distribution of medicines, FDA officials said.

Shipments of OxyContin bottles with the transmitters will begin this week to Wal-Mart and wholesaler H.D. Smith, said the drug’s manufacturer, Purdue Pharma.

Pfizer Inc. plans to start shipping bottles of Viagra with radio frequency identification, or RFID, by the end of next year, a Pfizer spokesman said.

OxyContin is a powerful narcotic that has become a target for drug abusers who figured out how to use it for a quick, heroin-like high. The new bottles also should help authorities and the company in its battle against theft of OxyContin from pharmacies, Purdue Pharma security chief Aaron Graham said.

GlaxoSmithKline said it too would begin using RFID on one of its products in the next 12 to 18 months.

An FDA report this year concluded that radio transmitters should lead the way in fighting drug counterfeiting. But the Bush administration declined to order pharmaceutical companies to adopt the technology.