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People are throwing tantrums about being refused addictive pills from pharmacists. This comes at a time when the federal government is setting up a system of "policing" morphine based medications. If patients are frustrated by over the counter tablets what are they going to do when refused prescriptions?

Codeine is the drug of choice for most. Because it is freely available and not officially restricted one can understand the frustration when a sale is refused. It is not much use for pharmacists to call police. Giving people police records is going to make them more antisocial.

Telling people not to use Nurofen Plus for a headache is stupid. The public thinks, "Who are you to tell me what I can and cannot take?" - and rightly so! Pharmacists are not trained to deal with the public. They only learn chemistry, mostly irrelevant at that in today's prepacked world.

Monitoring purchases is a silly idea. It is another layer of costly bureaucracy that the public must pay for. If they are that serious then have it prescribed by a doctor, who now write scripts for extra strength, forte, codeine. That will take the pressure off pharmacists and put it on the doctor. GPs will not thank pharmacists for that.

Pharmacists know that having all codeine put on prescription will reduce sales so they are not calling for this. They want more talk. Yes, talk always helps - if you really want a solution that will reduce sales.

At the moment chemists are judging codeine buyers by the way they are dressed. Put on a suit and you can have as many codeine tablets as you want. I always thought pharmacist are a bit "thick". This confirms it.

Health by Ty Buchanan

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It is always a worry when drug manufacturers and pharmacists force themselves on decision-making bodies. Self interest rules both groups. Drug manufacturers want to increase sells and raise prices by "hook or by crook". Pharmacists want to hold onto their monopoly provided first by a piece of paper provided by a college and secondly by the government paymaster.

Pharmacists are like real estate agents - there is one on every street corner. In a competitive market this shouldn't be the case. Skills learned at university in chemistry is never used. Everything today is prepackaged. An unskilled person could do the job. They even want to do the work of doctors extending prescription repeats.

The Victorian Pharmaceutical Misuse Summit includes the Pharmaceutical Society of Australia. They want to bring in a medication monitoring system to reduce the number of drug overdoses. Being cynical, confiscation would be an ideal tact to increase sales. But aren't overdoses mainly taken by those intending to take their own lives? Surely, they are "barking up the wrong tree". More treatment facilities for mental illness are what is needed not medication controls.

We do not need another level of costly bureaucracy that clearly will not have any benefits. Obstructing patients from getting morphine based pain killers will only drive them into the illegal market. More regulation and policing of this "industry" has had not impact whatsoever over the years. In the US they have arrested so many drug dealing people it has become a nation of prisons, Do we want that here?

In Australia, GPs make a joke to patients when they have to phone up with the patient's details and get a prescription number in order to prescribe strong painkillers. Even doctors see it as an unwanted bureaucratic process. A doctor decides to write the prescription before he makes the phone call and the request is never turned down.

Health by Ty Buchanan