Somewhere, at a secret location deep in the bowels of government, there is an awful lot of Viagra. And a team of civil servants are hard at work trying to increase the stockpile still further.
Secretary for Health and Welfare Katherine Fok boasted that undercover health inspectors had so far made 261 'test purchases'. This was all part of a concerted campaign to catch chemists selling the anti-impotence drug illegally. But she gave no indication of where this huge stockpile was being kept, which may be just well, given the likely consequences of such a disclosure.
Many legislators weren't satisfied. They seemed to think the administration wasn't buying enough Viagra because it was only targeting pharmacists. They complained that crooked doctors, who also appear to be a major source of black market supplies, should be the target of similar undercover operations.
Many showed signs of having avidly followed the issue. And those from the Democratic Party were particularly well informed about it. Perhaps hoping to cultivate a new constituency, it was Michael Ho, the party's health spokesman, who raised the issue in the first place.
While politicians from other parties saved their fire for the many more weighty items on yesterday's agenda, a succession of Democrats rushed to voice their views on this issue of more immediate interest to the man in the street. Cheung Man-kwong had heard some people were just walking into surgeries and paying $150 for a prescription form that allowed them to purchase the drug from a chemist without even having to see a doctor.
And fellow Democrat Law Chi-kwong knew of one instance where a doctor had supposedly prescribed Viagra as a cure for a stomach ailment. Fred Li, also from the Democratic Party, raised the case of a clinic which was openly advertising it as a 'tonic drug' that is used for recreational rather than medical purposes.
