Online selling of OTC: Submission of a written request to the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare, the Consumer Agency, and the Administrative Reform Conference, urging to maintain the ban of the selling of OTC drugs online.
2010-06-18
On June 17th, we submitted a written request to the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare( MHLW), the Consumer Agency, and the Administrative Reform Conference, urging them to maintain the ban on the selling of OTC drugs online.
Selling OTC drugs on the Internet threatens their safe use.
Medwatcher Japan called for consumer groups to join, and conducted a huge joint campaign to ban the online selling of OTC drugs.
As a result, the Pharmaceutical Affairs Act was amended, and in principle selling OTC drugs online was banned in June 2009.
However, internet services companies are campaigning against this, stating that the drugs can be sold on the Internet.
“Face-to-face selling” is essential to guarantee the safe use of OTC drugs,
However, this cannot be achieved through websites that sell such drugs.
Safety over convenience should be prioritised.
Therefore, we submitted a written request to the MHLW, the Consumer Agency, and the Administrative Reform Conference, urging them to maintain the ban on the online selling of OTC drugs.
This written request was issued jointly by 15 groups, including drug-induced victims groups, consumer groups, and independent drug bulletins(The Informed Prescriber, NPO JIP) etc.
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