Luo Zhihua
Which medicines can and cannot be bought online?
How to buy prescription drugs?
Are drug selling websites authentic and credible?
Are drug safety regulations strictly enforced?
The "Measures for the Supervision and Administration of Drug Online Sales" (hereinafter referred to as the "Measures"), which will be implemented on December 1, has answered the above questions.
The "Measures" shows the trend of more stringent and standardized supervision. At the same time, it follows the principle of "online and offline consistency" in business supervision, and has stricter and more specific regulations on the separate display of online prescription drugs, prescriptions before drugs, and ensuring the authenticity of prescriptions.
With the official implementation of the "Measures", online drug sales will truly usher in an era of strong supervision.
Whether the online drug sales model can avoid chaos and achieve steady and long-term development depends on the mutual influence of the two forces of driving force and resistance.
The greater the driving force and the smaller the resistance, the more stable and rapid the development of online drug sales will be, and vice versa.
The strongest supervision, laws to follow, and rules to follow constitute the main driving force for the standardization of online drug sales.
After the formal implementation of the Measures, the impetus will be maximized.
When the platform generally supports and abides by the "Measures", and the public generally understands and cooperates, the resistance will be reduced, and law enforcement supervision can produce the best results with the least amount of effort.
Conversely, the greater the resistance, the greater the cost of law enforcement supervision. When the resistance reaches a certain level, it may lead to half the effort and exhaustion of law enforcement supervision.
From this point of view, reducing resistance is crucial to regulating online drug sales.
The most important means of reducing resistance is to make the platform and the public better understand and support the relevant rules of online drug sales, and a basic prerequisite for understanding and support is to correct and eliminate some unscientific and inappropriate concepts.
For example, many people believe that after online prescription drugs are released, they can finally place an order for prescription drugs as easily as other commodities. The many conveniences brought by e-commerce to life will be reproduced in online drug sales. Buying medicine will be a breeze.
However, pharmaceuticals are no ordinary commodity, and prescription drugs are even more so.
Online drug sales should abandon e-commerce thinking, and some practices aimed at ordinary commodities in terms of platform promotions and consumer orders, such as discount sales and bundled promotions, must not be copied to the online sales of drugs, especially prescription drugs.
There are also many people who believe that doctors serve medicine, which is reflected in the fact that there is no prescription before placing an order to buy prescription drugs, and then they buy prescriptions after the event, or find prescriptions temporarily.
This phenomenon was more common in the past. It simplifies the procedure and makes it very convenient to buy medicines, and the platform can increase the sales of medicines.
However, prescription drugs are for medical services. They can be without drugs, but they cannot be without doctors. It is the correct order to go through diagnosis and treatment first, then to prescribe, and then to buy prescription drugs online with the prescription. , or the purchase of medicines goes to the front of the prescription, it will lead to corresponding chaos, and the effectiveness and safety of prescription medicines will be greatly affected.
In view of this, after the official implementation of the "Measures", there are many contents that need to be widely publicized.
For example, some important provisions of the "Measures", such as vaccines, blood products, narcotic drugs, psychotropic drugs, toxic drugs for medical use, radioactive drugs, pharmaceutical precursor chemicals and other drugs that are subject to special management in the country must not be sold on the Internet, etc. There is a need to significantly increase public awareness.
More importantly, it is necessary to help the public correct some common misconceptions.
Only by learning to treat online drug sales correctly can we greatly increase the enthusiasm and awareness of cooperation, thereby reducing the difficulty of implementing the "Measures", and finally making online drug sales a safe and convenient channel for the public to seek medical advice.