The Department of Pharmaceuticals (DoP), which was earlier keen to evolve a mechanism for discouraging the drug companies from bribing doctors for favours, is learnt to have abandoned its efforts as it could not thrash out the differences that have cropped up among the industry associations, especially between the big and small players in the field.

According to sources, after convening some routine meetings in the wake of growing public criticism against the unethical marketing practices of the pharma companies in which they bribe the doctors for prescribing their drugs, the DoP conveniently forgot the issue and preferred to keep it in the department's shelves. In the agenda of the department, there is no such issue as 'evolving a uniform code of marketing practices (UCMP) to arrest the unethical marketing practice of pharma companies', sources said.

Faced with a rising public outcry against this unethical practice, the DoP had last year asked the industry to evolve a common code of ethics for all the pharmaceutical units as existing codes do not cover members of all the pharma industry associations. The DoP had conducted industry-government meetings on the issue and had also asked the OPPI to take the lead to compile the marketing code in association with all major industry associations in the country.

But there were sharp differences between the industry associations over the common code. While the industry associations representing big and medium pharma companies wanted a uniform code of marketing practices which is not binding on the industry, the associations representing the more than 5000 small companies were in favour of a uniform code which is legally binding on the companies. The small companies were in favour of a legal document, on the same lines of such documents in the developed countries, and the violation of the code should invite punishments both in terms of money and jail term for the violators.

But eventually, even though the DoP had initially expressed serious concern about the issue and even wanted to eradicate this malaise, it could not make much headway on this front, mainly due to the indifferent attitude of the department officials on the issue.