Pharmacies, in particular those over the Hill, have been selling medications without prescriptions for decades (antibiotics etc you name it). But them again, Haitians have been selling antibiotics and other medications in shanty towns and ghetto communities for decades too!

Why didn't the reporter (Rashad Rolle) bother to find out which licensed drug wholesaler is importing and distributing Cytotec to the pharmacies that are in turn selling it over-the-counter without a prescription? The licensed drug wholersaler should know from the unusually high quantities of Cytotec being purchased that its customers, i.e. the pharmacies, are illegally dispensing this product without the required prescription.

Perhaps our Minister of Health who loves so much to be in the news will get off of his duff and arrange for an appropriate investigating to be done so that criminal charges that may be warranted could be pressed against the wholesaler and pharmacists concerned. One would think that as a minimum the pharmacies/pharmacists involved in the practice of dispensing drugs without the required medical prescription from a physician would lose their business license and/or pharmacist license.

If this practice is widespread, the entire leadership team of the Bahamas Pharmacy Council itself should not be free of consequences in this most serious matter.

Perhaps its time to have sensible conversations with young people about reproductive health and family planning.

Have you recently tried to have a sensible conversation with an illiterate grade F - educated young person from a broken home? Sadly they now constitute most of the young people in our country today. As a society we are reaping today what corrupt governments (PLP and FNM alike) have been sowing for us since the late 1960s. Good luck having those sensible conversations with the average young Bahamian.

And by the way, the average young person is unlikely to even be a 'true' Bahamian today.

Family planning is an oxymoron. The only people who plan to have kids are those couples who don’t easily get pregnant. Statistics are 96% of respondents in a pregnancy survey admitted their babies were happy mistakes.

Point is, obviously the only difference between teens and parents is the parents might be more willing to keep (have) and raise a child.

I thought that these pills were sold over the counter, no prescription necessary, in most of the more civilised countries of the world. A lot of fuss over nothing.

... abortion is illegal (against the law) in the Bahamas!!

…@TheMadHatter, IMHO killing unborn humans due to adult irresponsibility is never civilized, especially in an age of contraception!

All females having abortion pills available. Part of the equation is the male and if the female must be at stiuation to go through the hurtful forever scarring life altering event life taking, then in all fairness then the male must be made to take the same pill, perhaps his pee pee will drop off and others knowing will be more careful better putting their peepee there and with commitment to raising offspring even by himself.

Going to the root of the sadly unwanted babies must have been foremost Catholic education starting in Church and in other Religious Faiths especially there seems some 3,000 buildings, groups, meeting areas etc claiming to be such and tax free benefits accorded to them in return to being a respected much dependant pillar of society learning the youths.

For Catholics birth control is not allowed, so you guessed it they developed a habit to get around the obstacle; you guessed it they diddle little boys.

Done over and over anywhere there is a catholic institution there is diddling.

Statistically the most rapes and abuses are committed by Catholics, more than all other groups combined.

And yes, they do this tax free and un challenged for the most part

Shame on the Tribune and Rashad Rolle for this terrible article!
Our kids are still taught abstinence instead of sexual education, we have no legal abortion procedure, conservatives vilify family planning, the government fails to change any of this....and yall point at the pharmacy's? The people trying to help families, even at legal risk. They even direct them to doctors to make sure they're ok and you say it like it's a bad thing!
This isn't journalism, this is pathetic.

You clearly missed the point about the dangers of medications/drugs being dispensed by some pharmacies without the required prescription of a medical doctor.

Pharmacists have essentially the same education as a doctor, at least in the real world.

… women have a variety of contraceptive options available and those who have more than three children can have their tubes tied if they don't want another! Terminating developing life is simply wrong!

It hasn't exactly been kept secret from reaching the Tribune, when for years the most seasoned street and jibs comrade journalists - has been reporting lots about the selling legal drugs, **illegally.**

What assurances are there that controls are in place, **and working as intended,** to block the import and sale of falsified and substandard drugs - including the counterfeiting brand name drugs - something of which the Chinese, have become the world's most efficient supplier of?