WITH NO PARTICULAR fanfare, the Food and Drug Administration launched a task force in July to deal with the issue of counterfeit drugs. Since then, the task force has received only cursory attention and sparked little debate. In the light of The Post's "Pharmaceutical Roulette" series published last week -- which described for the first time the full extent of the "shadow market" in American pharmaceuticals -- it has become clear that this issue needs to be given much higher priority. According to reporters Gilbert M. Gaul and Mary Pat Flaherty, America's prescription drug market, once one of safest in the world, has been undermined by a multibillion- dollar market in counterfeit, illegal and imported drugs. Exploiting legal loopholes, felons regularly divert discounted drugs from the nursing homes they were intended for and resell them at high prices; distribute fake drugs using packaging that makes them impossible to distinguish from the real thing; and import drugs from abroad without subjecting them to any safety tests at all. Some of these drugs end up in pharmacies, where they are purchased by unknowing consumers.
