Chinese police seize Viagra, porn and “man coffee” in raid
A Chinese doctor shows the anti-impotence drug Viagra at a hospital in Shanghai. Viagra reportedly made its debut in mainland China 2003 and is now available by prescription in full-service Chinese hospitals.
Chinese police have reportedly detained 52 people in a crackdown on pornography and drugs, including the anti-impotence pill Viagra and a substance referred to as "man coffee."
The Guangzhou ring was reportedly selling the drugs, including "fake" drugs, to the domestic and overseas market, Reuters reports, citing Xinhua.
As part of the bust, the police confiscated nearly a million pornographic pictures "used for packaging" and also shut down the printing press.
No explanation was apparently offered for the term "man coffee."
Numerous recent government crackdowns on reportedly tainted food products and medicines have apparently had little effect.
The Chinese authorities have this year uncovered the sale of drug-tainted pork, bean sprouts treated with a carcinogenic chemicals and stale bread treated with dye to make it seem fresh.
Meanwhile, a total of 53 officials involved in the sale of melamine-tainted milk products — which killed at least six babies and sickened 300,000 — were punished last month, with several receiving life sentences in prison.
The State Council, or China's Cabinet, ordered a renewed crackdown against illegal additives to food and medicine, warning of severe penalties.
However, GlobalPost's Kathleen E. McLaughlin reported, the authorities have have said that at in at least one case — in Gansu province, where milk was laced with nitrate— "the poisonings were intentional, not the byproduct of greed as in the case of widespread melamine contamination in 2008."