The Maharashtra Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has detected cases of professional misconduct like absence of pharmacists and not furnishing proper billing details during surprise inspections at retail drug stores over the past one month.  Cases have also been detected where unqualified people have sold Schedule H drugs to the patients.   

The state regulator had earlier issued stop sale notices while inspecting at 11 such drug retail stores and found two stores in Mumbai which were found violating Rule 65(2) of the D&C Act for pharmacists not being present in both the cases.

In its ongoing drive against non-compliance to Drugs and Cosmetics Act (D&C Act), the state drug regulator in the past had also served 2,428 show cause notices (SCN) on the retailers based on violations of D&C Act like dispensing medicines without prescription, without proper bill and for absence of pharmacists.

Licenses of 500 retail pharmacies were canceled and of another 1,674 retail drug stores were suspended as a part of inspections done on 18,067 retail pharmacies across the state between April 2015 and January 2016.

The regulator had over the past two months seized stocks of medicines worth Rs. 3 lakh from a Mumbai-based firm and canceled licenses for violation of Section 18(C) of D&C Act.

Further to this, the Maharashtra FDA filed FIR against a firm in Maharashtra which was found violating the D&C Act, Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act, 1985 (NDPS Act) and sections under Indian Penal Code (IPC). One person has already been arrested.

Under the NDPS Act, it is illegal for a person to produce, manufacture, cultivate, possess, sell, purchase, transport, store, and/or consume any narcotic drug or psychotropic substance.

The state regulator also detected a case of a Mumbai based firm which mixed ayurvedic drugs with allopathic medicines in contravention to the provisions of the Drugs and Magic Remedies (Objectionable advertisement) Act (DMR Act) 1954.

DMR Act seeks to curtail undesirable advertisements pertaining to drugs and magic remedies because advertising is considered to encourage self medication of harmful drugs. The Act lists the diseases and disorders in respect of which advertising is banned under Section 3 of the Drugs and Magic Remedies Act, 1954.