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Letters to the Editor
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Aspirin
Pack size limits are illogical
From Mr R. Murchie
I read the Broad spectrum
article “Expensive drugs are cheap, it
is the cheap drugs that are expensive” with interest (PJ, 9 December
2006, p686).
I am not a pharmacist but my wife is, and I read in The Journal many years
ago that 75mg of aspirin a day was an excellent prophylactic for stroke. Being
over 60 years of age at the time, I took the lesson to heart and began
buying and taking the said 75mg aspirin a day. The government took fright
at the few people who killed themselves with paracetamol and banned sales
of more than 36 tablets per packet in a pharmacy or 25 elsewhere of any
over the counter non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs regardless of their
mass. In passing I grumbled to my doctor about the stupidity of whatever
government department responsible. He told me he would add the aspirin
to my repeat prescription for hypertension and ever since I have saved
the £4.50 and cost the NHS my share of the £53m referred to
in John Wilson’s Broad spectrum piece.
I suspect the Government’s action was to avoid appearing to favour
aspirin and ibuprofen over paracetamol, a commercial reasoning when only
clinical reasoning should have applied. The decision to base it on tablet
numbers baffles me; surely it is the mass ingested that kills you.
Roy Murchie
Colchester, Essex |
The
Pharmaceutical Journal