Food and drug administration supports the online sale of prescription drugs to lift the ban: new version certification or drug store closure

Source: Guangzhou Daily on July 17, 2014, the State Food and Drug Administration "pushed out the public opinion" to lift the ban on online sale of prescription drugs, saying that a professional organization would be set up to supervise the online sale of drugs, and promised that the high-risk drugs would still be banned Industry observers believe that due to the high cost of the threshold, it is difficult for retail pharmaceutical companies to build their own websites everywhere Last year, the retail trade volume of online drugs in China reached 4 billion yuan The state intends to further lift the ban on prescription drugs through the Internet, but it has encountered many joint queries from pharmaceutical companies and pharmacies A reporter from our newspaper yesterday learned that the State Food and Drug Administration "pushed out all the people's opinions" to lift the ban on online sales of prescription drugs, saying it would set up a professional organization to supervise online sales of drugs, and promised to ban the sale of high-risk drugs Industry observers believe that due to the high cost of the threshold, it is difficult for retail pharmaceutical companies to build their own websites, and many pharmaceutical companies may still choose a third-party platform to sell drugs The reporter noted that the recent social doubts about the safety of online prescription drugs are mainly focused on two issues: low illegal cost of online pharmacies, wide business scope of online pharmacies, etc., which will greatly increase the difficulty of supervision and workload; and if the access requirements of online pharmacies are reduced, it will lead to the proliferation of online fake and inferior drugs The State Food and Drug Administration said in response that online sales of prescription drug pharmacies must be approved by the drug regulatory department, meet all the qualification conditions for offline operation, and open online sales of prescription drugs does not mean that all prescription drugs can be sold "We will establish an Internet drug sales catalogue For a few drugs with lower risk, they can be sold through the Internet; for those with higher risk, they are still prohibited from being sold online." Xu Jinghe, director of the legal department of the State Food and drug administration, said It is understood that for the identification of the authenticity of the website, the regulatory authorities will strictly review the access of the main body, strengthen the daily online inspection, and strengthen the daily supervision through the evidence preservation of information data "Many members of the public are worried about fake prescriptions and medicines on the Internet We will improve the regulatory system, clarify the Internet jurisdiction, and avoid a regulatory vacuum." Industry: as soon as the news of collective opposition to the proposed online ban of prescription drugs in the field of pharmaceutical distribution came out, a thousand waves were aroused Dozens of pharmaceutical distribution enterprises, including Guangdong, have expressed their doubts and objections It is understood that more than 60 industry representatives have held a meeting to oppose the full opening of online prescription drugs and "zero threshold" online drug sales threshold The local industry also has a voice Liu Guichun, Secretary General of Guangdong Pharmaceutical Retail Industry Association, told our reporter yesterday that he was not against the development of pharmaceutical e-commerce, but hoped that the industrial policies could be more consulted by the industry In his opinion, the threshold of physical drugstores is getting higher and higher, and the new version of certification may cause many drugstores to close down, so the online access threshold should be increased appropriately, which is more conducive to supervision; at the same time, physical drugstores require that the stores must be equipped with licensed pharmacists, and accordingly, online drug sales should also realize the direct communication service between pharmaceutical professionals and consumers "After all, drugs are special commodities If prescription drugs do not provide certain trading guarantee, it is likely to cause patients to buy the wrong drugs." In addition, Dong Yuli, a professor at the otolaryngology Research Institute of Guangdong Armed Police Hospital, said how to divide the rights and responsibilities between online pharmacists and doctors who prescribe in the hospital would also become a real problem.