No Plan For Mandatory Pharma Code, Says Govt

Times View: This is a strange flip-flop. The government seems to have taken four years to decide that it can do nothing. Since there is no evidence to suggest that its earlier conclusion that the voluntary code hasn’t worked was wrong, the rethink can only mean that the government lacked the will to create the code it had promised.

- Rema Nagarajan

For over four years the government has been maintaining that it was drafting a mandatory code on ethical marketing of pharmaceuticals with penal provisions since the voluntary code had not worked. But it has now admitted in Parliament it has no intention of making the code mandatory.

On September 18, when chemicals minister D V Sadananda Gowda was asked if the government had decided to make the Uniform Code for Pharmaceutical Marketing Practices (UCPMP) mandatory, he said no. This is a U-turn from the government reply in the Lok Sabha on May 15, 2016 when it said: “...code was reviewed and it was now decided to make it statutory. Once the code is made statutory it is expected that the unethical practices could be controlled more effectively”.