The Pharmaceutical Journal
Vol 275 No 7358 p80
16 July 2005

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· Adverse events
· Supermarket pharmacy
· Research
· Regulation of medicines
· OTC statins
· Pricing (2)
· Pharmacy practice
· CPD
· Reciprocity
· Registration examination
· Veterinary pharmacy
· The Society
· Birdsgrove House (5)

Letters to the Editor

Regulation of medicines

Section 60 Order — exists for a good reason

From Mr A. McCoig, MRPharmS

The Department of Health, naturally obeying its political masters in Westminster, has seen fit to raise the stakes of regulation through the Royal Pharmaceutical Society’s functions. We are expected to co-operate fully and help ensure a smooth passage of the order through Parliament. The section 60 order’s primary function will be to better protect the public by ensuring that pharmacists, as with other health care professionals, are subject to a fairly scrupulous legal framework of legislation. Politicians are driven by public opinion and that opinion has been largely shaped in recent years by the failures of the medical profession to self-regulate and the perceived erosion of public confidence in health care professions generally. As a direct consequence of this, we have to play our part in providing a more rigorous educational and disciplinary structure that ensures pharmacists raise their game accordingly.

However, hand in hand with this activity, we witness politicians pleading with the Government, under pressure from the powerful industry lobby, to deregulate more and more medicines so that they may be legally sold on any street corner by individuals with absolutely no training whatsoever in their use. Recently, at a motorway service station, I noticed Nurofen tablets and condoms being sold from the same slot machine in the gentlemen’s toilets. If such political and parliamentary activity is seen to be happening concurrently, someone from Whitehall needs to explain this strange logic and double standard. If we are to be the highly trained and highly regulated custodians of medicines to better protect the public we serve, then it is surely in the public interest to ensure that pharmacists are enabled to perform that duty comprehensively and that all medicines are treated differently from other items of ordinary commerce.

I look forward to a thorough and thoughtful explanation from a Government minister.

Andrew McCoig
Member of Council
Royal Pharmaceutical Society

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