WANTED BY CHEMISTS

Evening Post, Volume CXVI, Issue 107, 2 November 1933, Page 13

WANTED BY CHEMISTS

RESTRICTED SALE OF DRUGS

At the last .meeting of the Pharmacy Board of New Zealand, attended , by members elected to represent chemists in all parts of the Dominion, the following resolution was carried unanimously, with an instruction that it be transmitted to the! Prime Minister, the Minister of Health, and other representatives of the Government. "That the Pharmacy Board views with very great alarm! tho possibility that the Poisons Bill may not come before Parliament this session. The Health Department, the Police Department, and the Pharmacy Board are fully cognisant of tho need for the proper regulation of the sale of poisons; and the Pharmacy Board states emphatically that the matter is urgent in the public interest, and calls upon the 'Government to introduce the necessary legislation without delay." The law governing the salo of poisons is said to be more obsolete and ineffective in New Zealand than in any other part of the Empire. The present Poisons Act dates from 1868, without amendment. Many lethal drugs may be sold without any legal restrictions today, simply because they were not known in 1868, and are therefore not scheduled as poisons. ' Some of them are known to have been used by persons concerned in criminal prosecutions during the past ye.ar or two in this country. It is pointed out that chemists have nothing to gain in this matter; in fact, proper legal restrictions upon poisons would merely add to the lengthy list of formalities they arc already confronted with.