The consumer law in preparation could authorize the sale of non-prescription drugs by supermarkets, according to a union of pharmacists.
Lobbying from large retailers, led by Michel-Edouard Leclerc, seems to be bearing fruit. The industrialists had already won a victory last March. Indeed, the consumer law authorized the free sale of pregnancy tests and lens care products. And the government could go further. A new consumer law must be presented to parliamentarians this summer and debated in September. However, according to Gilles Bonnefond, president of the USPO, a union of pharmacists, the pharmaceutical monopoly could this time shattered by the sale of non-prescription drugs in specialized shelves of supermarkets.
Gilles Bonnefond, president of the USPO: “There is an imminent danger, I am very worried. Industrial lobbying takes place through work committees which no longer come under the Ministry of Social Affairs, but of the economy. “
The objective is therefore to bypass Marisol Touraine, who has always supported the monopoly of pharmacists. But the pressure is strong. Already last December, the Competition Authority proposed to expand the sale of non-prescription drugs to supermarkets. With the aim of lowering prices.
However, according to the Order of Pharmacists, “the prices of optional prescription drugs are not higher in France than in other European countries, it is sometimes even the reverse”. According to a study conducted at the request of the Order, smoking cessation products such as Nicorette, or drugs against digestive disorders, such as Imodium or Dulcolax, are less expensive in France. And the price of condoms would be lower in pharmacies than in supermarkets.
Finally, the Order insists on the fact that a drug is not a product like the others, but the mass distribution has only one objective, to always push for consumption. Arguments that Michel-Edouard Leclerc and the other bosses refute point by point and which seem less and less heard. And France could soon be one of the last European countries to break the pharmaceutical monopoly.
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