By Annelia Nixon

Tribune Business Reporter 

anixon@tribunemedia.net

The Bahamas Pharmaceutical Association’s (BPA) head yesterday branded talk of a partnership with the Consumer Protection Commission as “laughable” as he accused its chairman of throwing the sector “under the bus”.

Marvin Smith, hitting back after Senator Randy Rolle disclosed that unidentified pharmacies were selling medicines after their expiration date, blasted: “You can’t call for partnership after you try to throw us under the bus.

“That’s the equivalent of saying: ‘Well, since I’ve already mistreated you, we might as well try to be friends now.’ That makes no sense. The BPA is clear about this: Partnership must be based on mutual respect and trust.”

Mr Rolle had previously said: “Beyond grocery stores, we observed that some Over-the-Hill counter medication in drug stores was outdated, which also poses a health risk. Some medication, they have a date best used by as well. And again, right now, I think the National Insurance Board has a committee that looks at these things.

“But again, as consumer protection and not working in silos and being our brother’s keepers, we noticed that some of them were selling outdated medication. I don’t want to go into more details than that but there was a number of them that, again, we communicated with the relevant agencies, we communicated with some store owners and, for the most part, we got a lot of buy-in and co-operation that they’re going to try and adjust these practices.”

Mr Smith told this newspaper that information should have never been released at a press conference, and questioned whether the Commission is seeking “brownie points” or if it really wants to aid in fixing the issue at hand. He said the problem lies in the way the information was communicated.

“If you want to show the Bahamian people, ‘oh, we doing some work,’ simply say ‘we’re making our inspections at both grocery stores and pharmacies, and increasing the vigilance on consumer related concerns’,” Mr Smith said. “Once you say some this and some that, what you basically do is you put a target on everybody and it puts a negative connotation on the entire industry. That’s not professional.

“It would have been more proper for him to say: ‘We have conducted ten inspections, and out of the ten inspections we saw three that had some issues’. And if this is indicative, that means that we may have the problem in 30 percent of us.”

While Mr Rolle said the Commission is dedicated to safety and protecting consumer rights, and that expired medication poses a health risk, Mr Smith asserted there was a better way to handle the situation. He added that the Commission should, by all means, enforce the law when necessary but it should have come to the Association before announcing to the public that some pharmacies were selling expired medicine.

“No one’s advocating that  it’s A, not a health risk, or B, not an issue that needs to be corrected,” Mr Smith said. “What we’re advocating is how this is communicated. And if it’s that critical that you want to issue a warning, you have a Pharmacy Council and you have a Pharmacy Association.”

Mr Smith told this newspaper that, about two months ago, the BPA initiated a meeting with the Commission to discuss the concerns of each party. He said the conversation covered price controls with both sides promising to handle inspections respectfully.

“Those concerns were basically on price control and how the inspections were happening,” he said. “Our members didn’t like that. We came to them and said: ‘What are your concerns?’ They gave us some of the concerns. We went back to our members and we said: ‘These are things we want to work on.’ And we have been working on it.

“We discussed them with our members. We said to our members: ‘Let’s be more co-operative when the inspectors come about. The inspectors told us that they would try to be more respectful when they came about. And so we wanted to lower the temperature of animosity that had really developed here. What this does, does nothing to help them; absolutely nothing to help them. But to talk about partnership, after you spoke to everybody else except us, come on. They can’t be serious.”

Mr Smith added: “It’s not even about an apology any more. All we want them to do is live up to what they’ve agreed with us to do. We are a stakeholder. The Association is a stakeholder. If you say to me, as a stakeholder, ‘hey, we will partner with your Association because we want what’s best for the day and the people’, then live up to that, and communication is a part of that.

“No one’s running away from the fact that they may have gone into some places and found some issues. We have our own inspections and we go into places and find issues as an industry. It happens.That’s why we need inspectors. No one’s running away from that.

“But the issue for us is are we trying to really fix it or are we trying to get brownie points? Now if you want to get brownie points, say you want to get brownie points, and then we know what to do when we deal with you.” Mr Smith defended pharmacies, arguing that mistakes are made and rectified once noticed.

“One of the things we have to remember is that, for a lot of our pharmacies, these are not chains,” Mr Smith said. “These are Mom and Pop operations. And if major retailers in this country still end up with expired stuff on the shelves, like you go to major food stores and major retailers and you’ll buy a bag of chips or something else, and when you look at it, you realise it expired or something.

“It happens when you have a ton of inventory, and these are places that have much more staff than the average pharmacy. Mistakes can be made, and if they’re pointed out or consumers find it and bring it back, our members rectify it right away.

“But I don’t think there’s a benefit to going into a public forum and saying to the public: ‘Oh, these people are selling you expired stuff.’ Particularly when we have over 70 pharmacies in country and they visit three. That does not make sense.

“I challenge you to walk into any retailer that sells expirable goods, and find 100 percent perfection in terms of expiration,” Mr Smith argued. “It doesn’t happen because you have certain things that expire on a particular day. You have other things that expire on a particular month, then you have some goods that expire basically from the year-end.

“And so, at the end of the day, the fact is that a good could expire on the 13th of a month, and if that 13th happens to be a Wednesday and it doesn’t get pulled before the inspection on a Friday, for whatever reason, it might not get caught till the next Friday.

“And those are the things that happen in the basic day-to-day routine of business. It’s not perfect. So I wouldn’t say that every pharmacy has been perfect, every retailer has been perfect. What I’m saying is when you know these sorts of things, if they’re blatant, if they’re repeated, then enforce the law.

“There’s a way to handle these sorts of things, and blanketly smearing, and I use that word as strongly as I could, smearing an entire profession by going out there and just throwing something out as if it’s a regular thing or regular practice, for something that’s clearly an anomaly, I think it’s irresponsible for a government office to do that.”

Mr Smith said the BPA has released a missive to its members to be more vigilant, and to make customers feel comfortable enough to be able to come back if there happens to be an issue. He added that there are times pharmacists receive medication from parent companies that have already expired, and they have to return it and receive replacements. 

Mr Smith said he wants to avoid possible public panic, and would like to retain consumers’ confidence in the pharmaceutical industry. “We welcome enforcement. What we’re saying is: ‘Let us help you to fix this thing’ because what we cannot do is create a lack of confidence in an essential service,” he added.

“If people go out and take this ‘some’, because people hear what they want to hear, they now don’t have confidence in the appropriate places that they should be buying; not just buying their over-the-counter medicines from, but talking to their pharmacists about those medication.

“You’re going to have less informed people because they’re not talking to their pharmacies. And two, where else are they going to get this stuff from? They’re going to go into these other places.”