Elite Pharmaceuticals Inc (ELTP)

[WeeZuhl]

Great stuff, N2K. Thanks.

Excluding foreign businesses operating in China, the fact is that no Chinese business exists without the blessing of the government. And, this blessing includes the access to deep pockets.

This made me think of this Bloomberg article. The graph shows the miniscule amount of legit opioids in China- due to state restrictions. The only way the restrictions will loosen and allow increase in Chinese opioid market will be with strict state controls. I suspect this will mean an emphasis (requirement) for ADF formulations.





http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-03-31/china-comes-to-grips-with-opioids

China Comes to Grips With Opioids
The painkillers work, but the Chinese worry about addiction.
Bruce Einhorn
Bloomberg Businessweek
March 31, 2016 — 1:55 PM EDT


More than most countries, China has good reason to be wary of opioids, synthetic drugs like OxyContin that share opium’s power to suppress pain. In the 19th century the nation lost two wars to the British in a futile attempt to keep opium out of the country. After the defeats, part of what the Chinese call their century of humiliation, millions of people became addicted to the drug: In the early 1900s more than 25 percent of Chinese men used opium regularly. One of the government’s proudest achievements after the communists took power in 1949 was wiping out “the scourge of opium,” as China’s State Council put it. Partly out of that historic sensitivity, China today restricts the use of opioids far more tightly than the U.S. and other Western countries.

So, while the government is encouraging local drug companies to do more research and development on opioids, says Zhenjiang Yue, chief executive officer of Aoxing Pharmaceutical, the official approach to prescription painkillers “is still very restrictive.” Aoxing last year received a license to make tilidine opioid tablets, a painkiller widely used in Germany.

In China, outpatients are allowed prescriptions for no more than seven days’ worth of regular narcotics. Cancer patients can get prescriptions for up to 15 days but must first receive a document from a qualifying hospital certifying that they need treatment using narcotics. To keep track of the drugs, doctors who administer injectable opioids must return the empty drug vials. “Once, we accidentally broke a used bottle, and the doctor, the hospital manager, and I each had to write a self-criticism,” says Ni.