The Department of Health, through the Medicines Control Agency, has tried and failed to bring a successful prosecution against a Manchester pharmacist for the mail order supply of extemporaneously dispensed medicines.
Mr David Reissner (Charles Russell, solicitors) told The Journal on April 3 that the metropolitan stipendiary magistrate at Thames magistrates court had thrown out a six-year-old charge that the pharmacist, Dr Alan Robinson, had breached the section of the Medicines Act 1968 that restricted sale or supply of non-general sale list medicines to registered pharmacies (Section 52). The MCA had alleged that it was an offence to sell or supply medicines to someone who was not present at the premises from which the supply was made.
Section 108 of the Medicines Act gives the Royal Pharmaceutical Society a concurrent duty with the Minister of Health to enforce Section 52. The magistrate ruled that the wording of Section 108 meant that the Minister could only take action in the absence of action by the Society if he had evidence that the Society had failed to perform its enforcement duty. No such evidence was presented to the magistrate.
Mr Reissner said that he had now written to the Department's solicitors to invite them to drop outstanding charges related to the supply of extemporaneously dispensed medicines on grounds that this constituted supplying unlicensed medicines.