Did Czech Health Minister Vlastimil Válek say the planned production of penicillin in the Czech Republic could inadvertently lead to the production of pervitin, a Czech name for methamphetamine? No, that's not true: Valek never mentioned pervitin during a discussion about the need to increase local production of penicillin. The claim was fabricated in a post designed to appear as if it came from the Czech liberal daily Denik N.
The image appeared as a video (archived here) on TikTok on February 15, 2024, with the caption (translated from Czech to English by Lead Stories staff):
Válek wants to prepare penicillin in the Czech Republic. 'But if I get meth out of it, don't be mad at me.'
This is what the post looked like on TikTok at the time of writing:
(Source: TikTok screenshot taken on Fri Feb 16 08:39:36 2024 UTC)
Válek did say he wanted to increase penicillin production in the Czech Republic because the country faced a shortage of certain antibiotics, including penicillin, to treat seasonal respiratory illnesses, but he never said the production could inadvertently lead to the production of methamphetamine.
Válek said on September 24, 2023, during a program on Czech state television that he would provide "maximum" support for penicillin to be produced locally again (archived here).
Newspaper articles quoting Valek on the idea can be found here (archived here) and here (archived here).
The post on TikTok presented a logo for the daily Denik N to falsely suggest the newspaper was the source of the quote. The daily did not publish an article on September 25, 2023, with quotes from Válek, and the logo used in the post shows it is a digital forgery that differs from that of the authentic Denik N publication.
Below is a screenshot of an authentic Denik N logo:
A Google search for the phrase "Vlastimil Válek and pervitin" (archived here) also returned no relevant results.
Pervitin is a Czech local name for methamphetamine, which has been one of the most problematic drugs in the Czech Republic for almost half a century, often produced by small-scale producers.
