Pharmacy control of pseudoephedrine sales to be scrutinised
The pharmacy profession will be scrutinised over the next few months to see if it can control the inappropriate use of pseudoephedrine purchased from its outlets, according to pharmacy organisations.
Representatives of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society, the National Pharmacy
Association, the Company Chemists’ Association and the Pharmaceutical
Services Negotiating Committee gave evidence to the Commission on Human
Medicines last week in an attempt to stop the proposed switch of pseudoephedrine-
and ephedrine-containing products from pharmacy only to prescription
only medicine status.
In a joint statement the four bodies said: “We have made a strong
case that inappropriate use of [pseudoephedrine] from pharmacies can
be controlled by pharmacy and the industry — by reducing the pack
size and implementing measures to restrict sales. It is now up to all
pharmacists to make this happen. A lot of stakeholders support the pharmacy
position but pharmacy will be under scrutiny over the next few months
so let’s not see any evidence of multiple sales of [such] products.”
Numark
SOP A standard operating
procedure that covers the sale of
pseudoephedrine-containing products has been developed by Numark for its members. |
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