The Union des groupements de pharmaciens welcomed this decision which, according to it, concerns the health of the French and the entire profession.
Pharmacists will be satisfied. Marisol Touraine confirmed that the government was not considering authorizing the sale of drugs in supermarkets, in a letter made public Friday by the Union of groupings of dispensing pharmacists (UDGPO).
More specifically, the Minister of Health expresses in her letter written on September 16 that “the government does not plan to change the legislation for the sale of drugs by large retail chains”.
The current legislation specifies that the sale of drugs is subject to “a set of criteria necessary to guarantee the security of the act of dispensing, justified for reasons of protection of public health”, declares Mrs. Touraine, and that she ” comes under the monopoly of dispensing pharmacists, whether this dispensing is done at the dispensary counter or via the Internet ”.
In a statement, the president of the UDGPO welcomed Friday, October 4 “this decision which concerns the health of the French and the entire pharmaceutical profession”.
Last July, the Competition Authority announced that it was studying the possibility of authorizing the sale of certain drugs outside pharmacies, the only way, according to it, to lower drug prices. This breach in the pharmaceutical monopoly would have allowed supermarkets to invest in this market, a policy defended for many years by the Leclerc group.
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