Barriers in Law Enforcement for Pharmacists’ License Hanging: Case Study of the Provincial Public Health Offices in the South

Abstract

Objective: To investigate the strategies used by the Provincial Public Health Offices in the south to handle with the problem of pharmacist’s license hanging, and conditions or restrictions relating to the decision not to enforce the law. Method: The study was a qualitative study collecting the data by in-depth interview with 15 informants who were pharmacists in the Provincial Public Health Office in the south, Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the Pharmacy Council of Thailand. All of them were responsible for overlooking the practice of pharmacists in drugstores. Results: Three measures employed by the Provincial Health Offices to handle the pharmacist’s license hanging included 1) Preventive measures or setting more requirements in the application for establishing a  new pharmacy, in additional to those already required by the law regarding the qualification of pharmacists on duty, license applicants and operating time of drugstores. 2) Deterrent measures or drugstore inspection: Different organizations monitored the drugstores with the different frequency. Overall, the Public Health Offices in 14 southern provinces were not proactive in drugstore surveillance for license hanging. 3) Suppressive measure or law enforcement on drugstores: one organization warned the pharmacists committing an offence with no more stringent measures and had never prosecuted anyone in license hanging. Eight of the Provincial Health Offices issued caution to the pharmacists committing the first offence and prosecuted for those breaking the rule repeatedly. The other four organizations followed the guidelines of the FDA and the Drug Act 2510 BE. Conditions relating to the decision not to enforce the law were 1) Believes and opinions of the authorities in three areas including negative effects of law enforcement on the themselves, effectiveness of law enforcement and their perceived low priority of pharmacist’s license hanging problem. 2) Working environment including unclear position of the FDA on the problem, the policies of the administrators in their office, operation of the other Public Health Offices, negotiation from drugstore owners, passive response of the Pharmacy Council of Thailand to the problem and the absence of consumer compliant.  3) Barriers for law enforcement including the inadequacies of the relevant regulations, limited number of authorities, and insufficiency of database and 4) Conflict of interest. Conclusion: The result of this study might be useful for the FDA, the Pharmacy Council as well as relevant organizations for designing the measures to facilitate law enforcement on the problem of pharmacists’ license hanging leading to a better consumer protection in the area of drug use.