Legality of E-Pharmacy in India | E- Pharmacy Attorney in Delhi NCR | E-Pharmacy Lawyer in Delhi NCR |
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With the advent of #e-commerce, the concept of online pharmacies and online sale of drugs has been in vogue throughout the world. This increasing trend of purchasing #medicines online has also increased the number of e-pharmacy platforms. #E-pharmacies are online platforms where the consumers can purchase the medicines without having to visit the brick-and-mortar pharmacies.
In India, the laws regulating the sale, distribution, manufacture and storage of drugs are:
- The Drugs and Cosmetic Act, 1940 (“DCA”)
- The Drugs and Cosmetics Rules, 1945 (“DCR”)
- The Drugs and Magic Remedies Objectionable Advertisements) Act, 1954
- The Indian Medical Act 1956
- The Code of Ethics Regulations, 2002
Under section 18 of the DCA read with Rule 61 of DCR states that sale of drugs without a license is prohibited and it can be carried only against a valid prescription of a registered medical practitioner. Further, the DCA also provides guidelines for the sale of restricted drugs such as the ones mentioned under the Schedule H and X respectively. However, the Act and the Rules only governs the offline sale of drugs and do not prescribe any regulation for online sale of drugs. This absence of explicit regulatory framework has questioned the legality of e-pharmacies from now and then.
In the case of Zaheer Ahmed v. Union of India & Anr (Writ Petition (C) No:11711/2018), a petition was filed by Dr. Zaheer Ahmed in the Delhi High Court, seeking a ban on sale of drugs online. The petition was filed when the petitioner discovered that one of his patients had obtained certain Schedule X drugs through and E-pharmacy without any prescription. The Hon’ble Delhi High Court imposed an interim ban on sale of drugs online till January 8, 2019 and response were sought from the Pharma Companies and the Ministry of Health on the issue in hand.
Therefore, a need was felt to regulate the online sale of drugs. As a result, a Sub-Committee was constituted by the Drugs Consultative Committee. Based on the recommendations of this Sub-Committee, the Draft E-Pharmacy Rules, 2018 (“Draft Rules”) were notified by the Ministry of Health & Family Welfare on August 28, 2018. The Draft Rules states the requirement of registration of e-pharmacies and the mandate for every e-pharmacy to have an e-pharmacy portal.
Although the draft Rules have been already made yet there exists a dire need to amend the ageing laws and put in place a stringent system to control and regulate the function of the e-pharmacies in #India.
Authored By: Adv. Anant Sharma & Akshata Sharma