I was reading a murder mystery and the answer hinged on a pill. The guy said it was an antacid but when the lady who solved it inadvertantly described it, the pharamacist said “Antacids don’t look like that,” it must’ve been something else.
So she describes it and he said “That an amphetamine.” This leads to the solution.
Now I realize TV, books and movies aren’t real life so my question is just how easy is it to identify a pill by the looks of it.
Don’t some pills look alike? Are certain types of pills colored similarly or similarly shaped?
Colors and markings of name-brand meds are unique but would require more than something like “it’s red and white” to identify, I think. Flipping open a random page in the PDR, for instance, I see that something called Symbyax is, at the 12mg/50mg dosage, is red and white with Libby 3234 on the red half and 12/50 on the white half.
OTOH, my generic HCTZ is just a tiny beige-ish pill. If it has any writing on it at all, I’ve never noticed it. Of course I usually take it at 7 in the morning. I doubt I’d notice if the palm of my hand had writing on it at that hour.
I don’t recall seeing any unmarked/unidentifiable pills in the US in years. I might have missed some, but pretty much every prescription med is marked/identifiable in some way. I just looked and even my generic aspirin is marked.Here is one of many websites that will help you identify a mystery pill that you might have found.
I’m certain a pharmicist could ID a pill like that, especially if it was a controlled substance. I have enough experience with opiates that I can tell you what painkiller you have, what size it is, and sometimes even who the manufacturer of that particular pill was.
Admittedly not 100% identical, but still appear quite similar. It would be very, VERY easy for someone making illegal drug tablets to put the word “TUMS” on their amphetamines and pass them off as the real thing.
Having worked 4 years as a pharmaceutical chemist, often doing “Physical Appearance” as the very first test, I can tell you that even when there are only a few options to choose from (at one time I could reliably only expect products of 10-12 different types to come in to be tested), it really isn’t always possible to tell what a loose pill could be. I’ve seen placebos for birth control look like the active BC for another brand, and both of those looked like the pill for a sleep aid. I’ve seen unmarked capsules for Parkinson’s treatment look identical to one being developed as a possible AIDS medication. We had a topical ointment for rashes look like the medicinal anti-dandruff shampoo (yes, it was a nasty, gooey ointment).
Many (perhaps most) companies now mark their medication, but some do not, and if someone were to manufacture a look-alike, it would be easy to fake it.
The only way to be 100% certain what is in a pill (for example) is to test it; and that usually would involve an extraction of the drug product and an analysis by HPLC or other analytical technique. 15 seconds in CSI-land, but typically at least 2-3 hours or more in real life.
When I was getting my late wife’s medications at Walgreens the info sheet I got with them always included a description of the pills, including any numbers/brand names printed on them. I’m presuming this was so they could be identified if they got mixed with other pills (which happened with some frequency as I was always having to put them in travel carriers.
Both prescription and non-prescription medications manufactured for sale in the United States are required by federal law to be marked in such a way as to be uniquely identifiable. Most mark a part of the drug’s NDC code on the pill in some way, while others will use their logo, the drug name, strength, etc. It can vary but as previous posters have pointed out, there are databases which one can use to look up a drug by the color and shape of the pill and the markings on it.
Any pill which is not marked is either a compounded substance or is technically an adulterated drug.
If one can get online, there’s a similar resource at Pill Identification Wizard from Drugs.com . You simply input the imprint, shape, and color, and the page will show you all pills that match the description.
