KEY POINTS:
Auckland health representatives want the controls tightened on sales of a cough and decongestant medicine used to cook up the illegal drug P.
The Waitemata District Health Board yesterday voted to ask theGovernment to change the status of pseudoephedrine so that only pharmacists are permitted to sell it
and they would be required to record the identity of the buyers.
The board also called for the Government to urgently create a national computer database of all buyers of the medicine. This would allow pharmacists, medicines control officers and the police to monitor all buyers and identify illegal pseudoephedrine "shoppers".
It is now a class C controlled drug, making it prescription-only, but is partially exempted, mainly for slow-release formulations and in smaller pack sizes and doses.
The exemption allows those presentations to be "pharmacy-only medicines" - any pharmacy assistant can sell them and a doctor's prescription is not needed.
The health board wants pseudoephedrine to become a "restricted" medicine, also called "pharmacist-only".
Board member and pharmacist Warren Flaunty has driven the move since the police briefed a board committee last month on the "P epidemic".
Minutes record that the police told the committee 70 per cent of clandestine laboratories were making methamphetamine drugs from locally procured medicines containing pseudoephedrine, "which can be obtained 'across the counter with no legal control or regulation".
"At the moment," Mr Flaunty said, "there's no legislation that says we have to record names. Most pharmacists do and most require photo ID."
At his West Auckland pharmacy, he saw at least two customers a day whom he identified as people trying to buy the medicines for illegal purposes.
"We've had a hold-up for pseudoephedrine, 12 months ago. One staff member had to leave because of the stress.
"This is a real scourge on society. The police presentation topped off what I had been thinking for years."
The last effort to restrict sales had been too little.
He dismissed potential privacy concerns over the creation of another electronic list of patients and their details, saying: "It's no different to what happens at the moment where people's names are taken for sales of pseudoephedrine."
The Health Ministry said some pharmacists had chosen to reduce stocks or not hold the medicines. Most now kept alternative cough and decongestant medicines which had no risk of abuse.
Tighter controls on the diversion of pseudoephedrine from pharmacies to illicit drug making were being considered by the Government, the ministry said.
Options included enhancing the current voluntary controls on sales; introducing electronic monitoring and reporting of sales; and further restricting the availability of the medicines by a change in legal status.