RE: The Australasian Association of Convenience Stores (AACS) seeking permission from the Minister for Health to allow the sale of medicines at convenience stores and service stations (I will not, however, be seeking a product or advice from my nearest service station or convenience store at any time).
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Firstly, it is really quite fatuous of the Association of Convenience Stores to argue "... that service stations and convenience stores have ease of parking and are open 24 hours", and are therefore well-placed to sell medicines to the public.
As to the substantive case, my experience of chemists is that it is most unlikely that I could obtain better advice other than from qualified, authorised chemists.
IN OTHER NEWS AROUND BATHURST:
The highest skill needed to work in a service station or convenience store is the ability to read a cash register and to give the correct change.
Why would the public possibly entrust their lives to those who work there?
There is an oft-quoted marketing maxim: that businesses should stick to their knitting. It means they should do what they are best at.
Service stations and convenience stories could not possibly be good at selling/advising about medicines, unless the AACS has indicated that its members will be employing qualified chemists 24/7.
The same applies to supermarkets, which have been trying for years to obtain permission to sell medicines.
For the AACS to suggest that Australia should follow the American model of drug stores does not sit well with me.
The American model of health care (including dispensing medicines) is one that, in my view, should be avoided in Australia at all costs.
I hope the Minister for Health will dismiss the AACS proposal as quickly as I read the article, and with the same prescription of contempt that I have written.
And a pox on the houses of the Grattan Institute, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, the Productivity Commission and Chemist Warehouse.
Their support is based mainly on the notion that chemist products are too expensive and more competition would reduce prices to the consumer.
I submit that a free, competitive market may be okay for banking and finance, petrol, energy and groceries and the like, but not so in the case of medicine and without having due regard to the paramount consideration: the safety and health interests of the community at large.