The Pharmaceutical Journal
Vol 279 No 7467 p220
1 September 2007

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Damned if we do …

A threatening cloud has passed

Damned if we do …

Recently The Journal was asked to publish a letter from a past president of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society inviting members of the Society to write to him in support of convening a special general meeting over the proposed increase in retention fees for 2008. This is a tricky one since we will be damned if we do publish the letter and damned if we do not.

We have decided not to publish it. There are a number of reasons for this decision. Historically, or at least over the past 20 years, The Journal has not been the conduit for tendering support for SGMs. Even over the highly controversial supervision debate in the late 1980s that ended in an SGM at the National Theatre in April 1989, attended by nearly 700 pharmacists, The Journal was not used overtly to collect names.

We believe members should use their local branch and friends and acquaintances for that purpose. We will publish letters raising the idea of an SGM and discussing the issues leading up to one, but The Journal should be a neutral forum and we believe it is inappropriate to use the letters pages in this way.

This is a practical decision, not a political one. With only 30 members required to give their names in support of an SGM, The Journal could find itself on a weekly basis in the invidious position of carrying requests for SGMs on all sorts of spurious and vexatious grounds.

As far as the fees issue is concerned, we also believe that now that over 10,000 names have been collected by an informal web-based petition and the formal Society consultation is still under way, the final decision about the fees remains in the balance. What would an SGM reveal that the Council does not already know, or will know when the consultation period has ended?

Calls for an SGM may be premature.

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A threatening cloud has passed

Qualified good news about ephedrine and pseudoephedrine comes from the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency this week (p221). The threat to make medicines containing these drugs prescription-only has been lifted provided the sale of these medicines is tightened.

Pack sizes are to be reduced, and sales limited to one pack per purchaser that must be made by a pharmacist. If these controls are not effective, the status of these medicines will be reconsidered within two years, or earlier if the agency perceives they are not working.

Pharmacists must take heed of this advice.

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