Pharmacist's sell drugs safely

As the issue of drug regulation becomes increasingly prominent among policy makers and activists not just in the UK, but in Latin America and the United States, it is worth looking at how such a system could be managed in the UK. Treating drug-users doesn’t just involve medicine and psychiatry but a range issue like social housing, the criminal justice system, employment and so on. Indeed, much of the history of drug-user treatment has been characterised by disputes and disagreements over the best approach.

As such, treating drug users is a highly complex process in the UK, with different doctors, clinics and health authorities prescribing differing treatments according to their own individual philosophies. Further complicating the issue, treatments take place in a myriad of different locations, from NHS clinics, private health centres, specialist drug centres, doctor’s surgeries and residential treatment centres.

However, one group of medical practitioners with an understated role is that of the local pharmacy. A report by the Care Quality Commission last week gave pharmacies across the UK a clearly positive review in how they administer and monitor the prescribing of controlled drugs with the report claiming that “most community pharmacies visited demonstrated safe management of controlled drugs”.

Although the report did highlight some of the problems facing pharmacists in administering controlled drugs, for example in terms of dosage, instalment amounts and intervals not always being stated on prescriptions.  Nevertheless, the report also specifically mentioned an increase in the self-reporting of incidents by pharmacists in 2009, comparing favourably with the “little evidence of self-reporting by other health care professionals”, suggesting they have a far greater self-regulatory culture than say doctors for example.

What is significant about this report is how it shows the pharmacies in the UK are in a unique position when it comes to the regulation of controlled drugs. When one comparatively looks at the pharmacies in the United States, it is easy to see the successes of the regulatory framework in the pharmacies we have here in the UK. Indeed, the greatest drug problem in the United States is widely acknowledged to be the abuse of prescription drugs from doctors and pharmacies. The Department of Health’s Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration in the USA (SAMHSA), reported that abuse of opioid painkillers has risen by more than 400 percent over the last decade.

Despite the recent cases of the American celebrity deaths through prescription drug abuse such as the deaths of Anna Nicole Smith and Heath Ledger, which have attracted widespread media attention, it is important to highlight how here in the UK, we haven’t achieved anywhere near the same levels of prescription drug abuse as they have experienced. The regulatory function pharmacies can and do provide would seems like the logical and rational way for controlled drugs to be safely distributed by trained health professionals in any possible future regulated market in drugs that are currently illegal.