What Does It Mean to Live in an Adulterated Society?

A strange kind of innovation is taking place in Bangladesh. Someone has apparently discovered that a contraceptive pill can be made to look like Yaba with a little red or pink ink. The pills are then reportedly sold to drug users as the real thing. According to a report, this trade has been taking place around the Bagmara railway line area in Rajshahi, with some users reportedly falling ill after consuming the fake Yaba.
We have become remarkably skilled at using false colours, misleading packages, and artificial scents to make low-quality or unsafe goods look premium or fresh. Now, adulteration is no longer a food safety issue; it is a system of widespread deception. The deception has become so deeply embedded in our daily lives that everyday shopping now requires constant suspicion. To avoid being tricked, regular citizens are constantly acting like detectives: examining fish, doubting spices, smelling milk and checking medicine expiry dates. 
That is what makes adulteration more dangerous than the substance being mixed into a product. It destroys the possibility of ordinary trust. A market cannot function properly when the buyer must constantly assume that the seller may be deceiving him. A society cannot function comfortably when people begin with suspicion rather than confidence.
Consider the extraordinary range of things reportedly adulterated or contaminated. Food is only the most visible part of the problem. Medicine, which should represent the opposite of deception, can also become a target. The law itself recognises the seriousness of adulterating drugs. Bangladesh's Penal Code contains provisions against adulterating medicines in ways that reduce their efficacy, alter their operation or make them harmful. The Safe Food Act 2013 similarly establishes a regulatory framework for controlling food production, storage, supply, marketing and sale. The Formalin Control Act 2015 was introduced specifically to regulate formalin and prevent its harmful misuse. 
So, the problem is not that Bangladesh has no laws, but it lacks permanent enforcement. Instead of a continuous system of accountability, we have developed a predictable cycle: media report sparks public outrage, mobile courts conduct operations, and media moves on. Once the hype dies, adulterators return to business as usual. The enforcement campaign becomes an event rather than a permanent system of accountability.
This creates a peculiar economic calculation. If the expected profit from adulteration is substantial, the probability of detection is low and the punishment manageable, the law becomes little more than a business expense. As Francis Fukuyama stated in his study, when trust disappears, transactions become more expensive because everyone needs additional verification, supervision and protection. That is exactly what adulteration does. It imposes a hidden tax on everyone.
This is why the fake-Yaba story should not be dismissed as merely another bizarre crime story. It exposes something larger. Someone has discovered a market in which the buyer does not actually know what he is buying. The seller does not need to produce Yaba. He only needs to produce something that resembles Yaba sufficiently to fool the customer. That is the essence of adulteration everywhere.
The disturbing part is that the same mentality can exist far beyond the marketplace. We can build impressive structures without quality, issue certificates without imparting knowledge, and fabricate statistics without improving reality. We can use sophisticated language to disguise primitive intentions. We can even manufacture an illusion of accountability without establishing the real thing.
When making money becomes the dominant measure of success, the question of whether something is right can gradually be replaced by the question of whether it works. If a product sells, why worry about what is inside it? If customers keep buying, why worry about whether they are being deceived? If a fine can be paid, why worry about breaking the law? This is how a society slowly normalises abnormal behaviour. The most dangerous stage of corruption is not when everyone is shocked by it. It is when nobody is surprised anymore.
We should therefore be careful about blaming only the "greedy businessman". A society cannot demand morality from individuals while designing markets in which dishonesty pays, and honesty struggles to survive.
The solution, consequently, cannot be another occasional raid alone. It requires reliable testing, traceability, stronger market surveillance, meaningful punishment, transparent supply chains and institutional coordination. More importantly, punishment must become sufficiently predictable that adulteration is no longer an attractive calculation. The objective should not be to produce spectacular enforcement campaigns. It should be to create a system in which adulteration becomes difficult, risky and commercially irrational.
A person who adulterates food does not know whose child will eat it. A person who sells fake medicine does not know whose parent will depend on it. A person who sells a harmless-looking tablet as Yaba may never see the person who becomes sick after consuming it. Distance makes cruelty easier. The buyer becomes a number, the product becomes a commodity and the consequence becomes somebody else's problem. But somebody else's problem eventually becomes everyone's problem. And that may be the most dangerous form of adulteration of all.
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The writer is an academic, 
journalist, and political analyst. 
He can be reached at 
[email protected]