?It? is Happening Already

"It" is shortages of critical commodities, a worrisome example of which is the raw materials used to prepare pharmaceutical drugs. Last week a Wegmans pharmacy in upstate New York ran out of OxyContin® and several other prescription medicines. Customers were told that Wegmans' supplier did not have the ingredients to make several medicines and did not know when they would have them. Wegmans isn?t a mom-and-pop corner store with no buying power. It?s a 71-store chain on the east coast, is one of the largest private companies in the US and had sales of $4.8 billion in 2008. Tasmania and India are the largest producers of thebaine, the active ingredient of OxyContin®, which is one of 20 alkaloid compounds derived from the opium poppy. Alkaloids cannot be stored by law, so each year's