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SCMP Reporter

PHARMACISTS yesterday hit out at Government ''double standards'' that allow private doctors to sell dangerous drugs without prescription or strict monitoring, opening the way for the drugs to end up on the streets.

  They called for private doctors to be brought under the same rules on control of dangerous medicines that are applied to hospitals and pharmacies.

  And they wanted doctors to be required to have a properly trained dispenser or pharmacist to issue drugs, citing prescription mistakes by young doctors as evidence that more checks were needed.

   The present system allowed ''bad apple'' doctors to sell drugs such as Wellconal, a heroin substitute, tranquillisers or the controversial sleeping pill Halcion, directly or indirectly to youngsters, said the Practising Pharmacists' Association of Hong Kong.

   The number of new reports of people under 21 abusing known drugs had quadrupled to 1,617 between 1984 and 1993, the association reported.

   Whoever was selling potentially dangerous drugs irresponsibly was drug trafficking, said Peter Suen Yiu-chan, vice-president of the Practising Pharmacists' Association.

   The pharmacists' groups plan to meet legislators and government officials in June in an effort to tighten drug control laws.

   They will also hold seminars on drug abuse in Kwun Tong, Tuen Mun and Kwai Tsing, notorious as havens of young drug abusers.

   There are about 500 registered pharmacists and dispensers, including those under the Hospital Authority.

   They have to keep a strict record in the Dangerous Drugs Register of the quantity and source of all incoming dangerous drugs, the quantity sold to every patient, the patient's name and address and that of the doctor prescribing the drugs.

  A daily balance of drugs remaining is kept and a monthly report sent to the Department of Health.

  In contrast, Hong Kong's 2,000 private doctors can choose to keep a record that details only the drugs sold and to which patients.

   But without a record of incoming amounts of drugs and a daily balance of those remaining, it is almost impossible to keep track of the drugs in doctors' possession, say the pharmacists.

  There was no logical reason why the Government could not apply in private clinics the same system as public dispensaries, said Mr Suen.

    ''You cannot account for where these drugs have gone, so there is a reason to suspect that these drugs are going out on to the street,'' he said.

  There were 14 cases in 1991 and more than 20 in 1990 of doctors brought before the Medical Council unable to account for drugs in their practices.

   And there were probably more who were not caught, he said.

   He cited an example of a doctor in December 1991 who could not account for 785 tablets of Wellconal and 22 tablets of methadone, both used in treatment for heroin abuse.

   The Medical Council had suspended the doctor for a year.

   Pharmacists were better trained than doctors in what drugs were available, said Peter Chua Sek-chon, president of the Pharmaceutical Society of Hong Kong.

   If doctors sold medicine directly to patients without a prescription, mistakes in dispensing could not be spotted and patients had no choice of where they should buy their medicines, he said.

   Manufacturers sold 10 times as many drugs to private doctors as to pharmacists, suggesting abuse of the system, he said.

  Both men denied that the pharmacists were just trying to increase their own business, saying they wanted tighter control for the patients' benefit.

   And they called on doctors to ''band together'' with them ''to safeguard the safety of dangerous drug use''.

  No one at the Hong Kong Medical Association could be contacted for comment last night.



Chemists hit out at drug rules