MORE CARE URGED IN USE AND SALE OF DRUGS

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31116, 20 July 1966, Page 19

MORE CARE URGED IN USE AND SALE OF DRUGS

“The Press” Special Service I WELLINGTON, July 19. ! People bought and used\ potentially dangerous drugs I with “gay abandon,” a; Pharmaceutical Society of ; New Zealand seminar was; told in Wellington. The speaker was Professor) S. E. Wright, of the pharmaceutical department of the University of Sydney. “Today the public is subject to a terrific barrage of drug-advertising,” he said. “People just aren’t aware that drugs have to be handled with extreme care. They are not taken seriously. “Take aspirin, for example. It is a common drug but one that is not as harmless as most people think. “A survey taken in Glasgow recently showed that aspirin was the greatest killer of children in the United Kingdom. “If this isn’t startling enough, most of these fatal doses were given under medical supervision.” Professor Wright said that drugs even more dangerous than aspirin could be easily bought from a milk bar, supermarket or even a petrol station.

People used them freely, not realising the harm they were causing.

■ Even' general practitioners ' i often did not have a full ; knowledge of the drugs they ] were prescribing for their 1 ■ patients. It was not necessarily their 1 : fault, for there were so many ) new drugs being developed all the time that it was very ) difficult to keep up with : i them. “Pharmacists are the only I people really equipped to deal | with drugs,” Professor Wright ‘said. “Some of the drugs at | present on the shelves of shops should be transferred to their care.” A pharmaceutical council in Britain had made this issue one of its main concerns. In Australia, too, there was a strong movement along the same lines. Professor Wright criticised the trend in both New Zealand and Australia of pharma- i cists setting up shops selling ■ a wide variety of goods. ' “A pharmacist needs time for working with drugs,” he said. “If he has to look after i other stock and run a shop < he must have less time for I his real work. “This is not fair to him or to the public who, after all, have paid for his training and < should be getting the full i benefit.” The seminar—the first to ■

be held in Wellington—was attended by more than 130 pharmacists from Auckland to InvercargilL The seminar was opened by the Mayor of Wellington, Sir Francis Kitts. Other speakers included the head of the pharmacy department at Otago University, Professor F. N. Fastier; the Director-General of Health, Dr. D. P. Kennedy; the professor of sociology at Victoria University, Professor J. H. Robb and the Crown Prosecutor for Wellington, Mr W. R. Birks.