Move Pharma Manufacturing Overseas
Opinion: Outsource Pharma Manufacturing—For Your Own Good
By Ro
Americans love convenience. We want our meds cheap, fast, and available 24/7 at the nearest drugstore, sandwiched between the seasonal candy aisle and whatever vitamins claim to cure brain fog this month. But the hard truth is this: we can’t keep making our drugs here. It’s inefficient, it’s expensive, and frankly, it’s beneath us. It’s time to send pharmaceutical manufacturing abroad—where it belongs.
I know, I know. "But Ro," you cry, "what about American jobs? What about security? What if China holds our antibiotics hostage?" Spare me the paranoia. The global economy runs on outsourcing, and pharma should be no different. We’ve been manufacturing overseas for decades anyway, and last time I checked, nobody’s EpiPen stopped working because it was made in India instead of Indiana.
Let’s talk costs. Manufacturing drugs in America is a nightmare. Between labor costs, environmental regulations, and never-ending compliance paperwork, we’re paying a premium to do something other countries can do for a fraction of the price. Why fight it? We don’t make our own iPhones. We don’t weave our own clothes. But suddenly, when it comes to pills, we’re supposed to go full "Made in the USA"? Please.
And let’s not kid ourselves about "quality control." The FDA doesn’t care where a drug is made—it just cares that it works. Whether that pill came from a lab in New Jersey or a factory in Bangladesh, it’s got the same active ingredient. Meanwhile, our insistence on keeping manufacturing local just makes drugs more expensive for the people who need them most. If you really cared about patients, you’d want their meds made cheaply and efficiently—wherever that happens to be.
The future of pharma isn’t in some nostalgic, union-friendly vision of "American manufacturing resurgence." It’s in global supply chains, cost-cutting measures, and, yes, outsourcing. So let’s be real: your medicine doesn’t care where it’s made. Why should you?
Ro is a Jersey native, pharma industry insider, and firm believer that efficiency beats sentimentality every time.
