For many who have trouble falling or staying asleep, sleeping pills remain popular, but aren’t terribly effective - they help you fall asleep and stay asleep a very modest amount, and cost a great deal, as The New York Times reminds us. Rozerem, for instance, gets you to sleep 7 to 16 minutes faster than a placebo, or fake pill; increases total sleep time 11 to 19 minutes, and costs $3.50 a pill, according to an analysis last year. “People seem to be getting a lot of relief from sleeping pills, but does getting 25 minutes of sleep really give you all that relief?” Wallace Mendelson, the former director of a sleep disorders unit at the University of Chicago and industry consultant, tells the paper. “A bigger aspect of this is that they change a person’s perception of their state of consciousness.”

And the counterfeits keep on coming. That’s the message in the latest look at the problem by The Star-Ledger of New Jersey (which owns Pharmalot). The issue is compounded by uncertainty and disagreement over ways to track medicines through the supply chain. The FDA ordered electronic tags to be introduced in late 2006, but a federal judge blocked the move after small wholesalers argued it was unconstitutional. The law didn’t apply to Cardinal, AmeriSourceBergen and McKesson, which handle a majority of the nation’s meds, the paper writes. They were exempt because they acquire drugs directly from manufacturing plants. Instead of waiting for federal rules, 10 states have adopted their own pedigree requirements.

What would happen to the Boston-area economy if Biogen is sold? That’s the guessing game being played by Massachusetts officials, The Boston Globe writes. The biotech employs 1,750 people in the state, so concern is high now that Biogen is for sale. But Robert Coughlin, the new president of the Massachusetts Biotechnology Council, tells the paper that drugmakers are increasingly acquiring or taking stakes in biotechs to help fill their pipelines as patents on their old drugs expire. When that happens, he notes drugmakers typically maintain or even expand a biotech’s research operations, thus setting the stage for more, not fewer jobs. Meanwhile, Biogen just reported declining profits and revenues, missing Wall Street expectations, the Associated Press notes.