The Pharmaceutical Journal
Vol 270 No 7244 p513
12 April 2003

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Letters to the Editor

Supermarket pharmacy

Charge of greed better directed at supermarkets

From Mr R. B. A. Johns, MRPharmS

I have no objection to being bracketed either in philosophy or in age with John Tapster, but Colin Hackett makes no convincing case for doing so (PJ, 29 March, p437).

If he will reread my letter (PJ, 22 March, p399) he will find that I confessed to total ignorance of any aspect of supermarket pharmacy, so any comments which I might offer about those of my colleagues who elect to practise their profession therein would indeed be ill-conceived; as I offered none they could be neither rude nor insulting. The only remark that I made about their working environment was qualified by the word "if".

I am not sure what Mr Hackett means by our wanting to "have our cake and eat it", but he seems to suggest that we belong in the generation that broke the chain of personal ownership. I cannot speak for Mr Tapster but on retirement I sold my business in 1995 to a private individual; even had I done otherwise I would still have resented an accusation of greed. All freely conducted transactions are concluded at a price on which both buyer and seller agree, and for either to accuse the other of avarice is futile.

I would suggest that that charge is better directed at supermarkets, whose interests seem to lie in adding the diminishing number of P medicines to their cut-price GSL medicines. They also want dispensing contracts, which, by virtue of economies of scale, provide greater profit margins than those available to independent proprietors, one of which Mr Hackett acknowledges that he aspired to become.

All that having been said, I am happy to agree with him that ultimately the blame for the present state of affairs lies with the Medicines Control Agency and beyond that body, with the Department of Health, which for many years has consistently sought to benefit at second hand from the economies of scale to which I refer above.

Richard Johns
Boston, Lincolnshire

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