PHARMACY INDUSTRY

Wairarapa Times-Age, 22 December 1938, Page 7

PHARMACY INDUSTRY

REORGANISATION PROPOSALS ANNUAL LICENCE FEE FOR CHEMISTS. PRICES MEDICINES. (By Telegraph—Press Association.) , WELLINGTON. This Day. Regulations giving effect to the provisions of the industrial plan prepared by the Bureau of Industry for the pharmacy industry were gazetted last evening. They have been made under the Board of Trade Act, 1919, and the Industrial Efficiency Act, 1936. The regulations are divided into five parts, the most important of which are those conferring on the Pharmacy Plan Industrial Committee certain powers for the purpose of reorganisation of the industry (Part III), and the payment by pharmacists of annual licence fees and levies (Part IV). The committee is to be responsible to the Bureau of Industry for conducting a survey or surveys of the distribution and operation of pharmacies and the public service rendered by pharmacies. It is to have power to arrange amalgamations and tansfers of pharmacies, and is to make recommendations when necessary to the bureau for the payment of compensation for loss of business or otherwise in any cases where the payment of such compensation is deemed for the carrying out of the plan to be necessary or desirable. COST OF MEDICINES. Another important duty of . the committee will be to investigate the prices and conditions under which pharmacists purchase drugs and also the prices charged by pharmacists for drugs and medicines-either when included in prescriptions or when sold or dispensed uncompounded. Provision is made for the preparation and issue by the committee of prescription pricing schedules setting out the amounts to be charged by pharmacists for compounding prescriptions. Other provisions cover such points as the modernisation of pharmacies, the co-ordina-tion of the selling and display methods of the industry, appropriate advertiseing calculated to increase the goodwill of the industry, the employment and training of pharmacy apprentices, the making of recommendations to the Minister of Health for the control of quackery, and such organising and administration as the oGvernment may require under the pharmaceutical benefits section of the Social Security Act, 1938. LICENCE FEES. The annual licence fee is to be £1 for each pharmacy, together with an annual levy computed as follows:— Pharmacies with a sales turnover not exceeding £lOOO, £4. Exceeding £lOOO but not exceeding £2OOO, £5. Exceeding £2OO but not exceeding £3OOO, £6. Exceeding £3OOO but not exceeding £4OOO, £7. Exceeding £4OOO but not exceeding £5OOO, £B. Exceeding £5.000, £B, plus 10s for each £5OOO of sales turnover exceeding £5OOO. Provisions are included in this part for the computation of sales turnover and as to the manner of the payment of the fee and levy.. Applications for leave to transfer licences or for appeals against licensing decisions are subject to a tee of £2, which in the latter case is to be refunded if. the appeal is substantially successful. . “It will be seen that the levy is a graduated one, which will mean that the smaller pharmacies will now pay onlv £5 or £6 a shop according to turn over,2-states the Minister of Industries and Commerce, the Hon. D. G. Sullivan. “The Bureau of Industry will be communicating individually with all pharmacists as soon as possible, informing them of the procedure to be followed in lodging applications for licences, so that meanwhile no action will be necessary on the part of those engaged in the industry.” Mr Sullivan said that the Government and the Bureau of Industry had made every possible endeavour to assist pharmacists to rehabilitate their industry. “I appeal to all pharmacists on thenpart,” said Mr Sullivan, “to extend that measure of co-operation to their industrial committee which will enable it to administer the regulations to the best advantage of the industry. I believe that the basis is laid in the regulations for greatly improved conditions m the retail pharmacy industry, and m my opinion a new and better era is dawning for the pharmacists of our Domin10The industry to which the regulations apply is that licensed under the provisions of the Industrial Efficiency Act and described as “the business of any chemist or druggist carried on by the keeping of any open shop or place for the compounding or dispensing of prescriptions.”