Pseudoephedrine medicines available again as bill passes

Cold and flu medicines containing pseudoephedrine can once again be sold on pharmacy shelves.

The legislation which will allow medicines containing pseudoephedrine to be available over the counter has just passed its third reading in Parliament.

The Misuse of Drugs (Pseudoephedrine) Amendment Bill will reclassify pseudoephedrine from a restricted medicine, allowing the public to purchase it from a pharmacy without a prescription.

Pseudoephedrine is an ingredient used to make the drug methamphetamine — or P — and then-Prime Minister John Key announced a plan to ban over-the-counter sales of drugs containing pseudoephedrine in 2009.

The ban came into force two years later.

Associate Health Minister and Act leader David Seymour has been championing his party’s policy to return the drugs to pharmacies.

Seymour told Parliament banning pseudoephedrine cough and cold medicines did not end the P epidemic.

“What actually happened is that those people in the business of selling it started to connect with criminal elements offshore and created more sophisticated ways of sourcing P from bigger, badder criminals and managed to bring it in at a lower price and make it more available to P addicts than ever before.”

Seymour said it was “incredibly unlikely” that people “are going to return to a less efficient, more expensive way of manufacturing P that involves going around pharmacies and buying up as many tablets as you can”.

Labour’s Ayesha Verrall said her party supported the bill with some concerns that she did not feel had been adequately dealt with. Green Party co-leader Chlo¨ e Swarbrick said her party also agreed with the change describing it as moving in the direction of “evidencebased drug law”.