German pharmacists have launched a campaign to reverse a government decision to allow medication to be ordered from abroad.
The Pro Chemist Initiative claims the government move, part of an attempt to control the escalating cost of prescription drugs, endangers their livelihood and puts patients at risk.
"Online and mail-order medication retailers will mean the end of the local chemist shop," said Dr Hans Günter-Friese, president of the Federation of German Pharmacists' Associations (ABDA).
"How can we keep existing safety precautions for selling medication when patient consultation degenerates into a conversation with someone in an anonymous call centre?" He said price comparisons between chemists and mail-order retailers, which show differences of up to 40 per cent, ignore the services chemists provide besides selling medication, not to mention the costs incurred in running a chemist shop.
Last month Germany's monopolies commission allowed the market for drugs to be opened to online and mail-order companies. The German government said it is obliged to offer people the chance to buy drugs up to 40 per cent cheaper online and from mail-order companies.
"It is not acceptable that it is more expensive to buy drugs here than to order from abroad," said Ms Ulla Schmidt, the German Health Minister. She has come under pressure to control public spending on medication in Germany, currently around €23.6 billion a year.
Last year she began talks with public health insurance companies and the ABDA after a study suggested the government could save over €300 million by breaking the pharmacists' monopoly.
Before the talks were completed, however, the Pro Chemist Initiative collected over two million signatures in a petition protesting the move towards deregulation.
Ms Schmidt said the pharmacists were only scaring their customers. "Nobody in my local department store asks me to agree not to order something from [catalogue-retailer] Quelle," she said. "People were told to sign or else they wouldn't be able to get their medication."
The European Court is expected to rule next year on whether the cross-border sale of medication is allowed under the common market.
