Addicts craving for a cough syrup high in East Singhbhum have been left high and dry after last month's crackdown launched by District Drug Inspection Office, Jamshedpur, but genuine patients are also suffering.
On December 20, the drug inspection office issued a circular to all 600-plus drug and chemical stores ' pharmacies in layman terms ' forbidding the over-the-counter sale of around a dozen cough syrups and one painkiller without prescription by a registered medical practitioner.
The frontrunners were the best-selling cough syrups Corex and Phensedyl, which are expectorants and sedatives. Teenagers as well as slum children below 12 find Corex, at Rs 68 per bottle, an affordable fix.
Deciding that it was better to be safe than sorry, medicine shops have started to junk cough syrups rather than get into the hassle of refusing customers without prescriptions.
"We are no longer interested to keep stocks of cough syrup such as Corex or Phensedyl. If we keep them, drug addicts in the guise of customers turn up and demand them. And as it is not a trend among people here to produce a prescription for every medicine, we have to face very embarrassing situations if we refuse someone when we have the syrup concerned," said a pharmacy owner at Sakchi Medicine Line.
He added that the drug inspection officials also monitored whether these cough syrups were being sold without authorisation. "As a result of our not keeping the stock of the syrups, genuine patients have to suffer," he told The Telegraph.
A medicine shop owner in Bistupur claimed he kept a small stock of Corex. "We only sell the syrup to patients who produce prescriptions of prominent practitioners," he said.
Drug inspector Kumar Rajneesh said the circular was having a positive effect.
"We have not banned Corex. But we want to ensure that medicines that act as intoxicants are sold only when prescribed by a doctor. Most medicine shop owners have begun following our instruction," he said, adding the drive would continue.
Corex, sold by global company Pfizer, contains chlorpheniramine maleate, an antihistamine, which gives the patient relief, while codeine phosphate reduces cough bouts, allowing sleep. Alcohol content is 8mg per 5ml.
There are no comments yet