Thank you dear subscribers, we are overwhelmed with your response.
Your Turn is a unique section from ThePrint featuring points of view from its subscribers. If you are a subscriber, have a point of view, please send it to us. If not, do subscribe here: https://theprint.in/subscribe/
More than 150 children died after consuming contaminated cough syrups manufactured in India. The tragedies in Gambia, Uzbekistan and India exposed serious weaknesses in pharmaceutical quality control, damaged India’s reputation as the pharmacy of the developing world, and raised uncomfortable questions about regulatory oversight.
The government’s response, however, has focused not on the factory or the functioning of the Central Drugs Standard Control Organisation (CDSCO), but on the patient. From this month, many cough syrups will no longer be available over the counter. Indians will need a prescription to purchase medicines that millions have used safely for decades.
It is a curious response to a manufacturing failure. The children who died in Gambia were not victims of excessive consumer choice. The children who died in Uzbekistan did not perish because cough syrups were available without prescriptions. They died because medicines contaminated with industrial chemicals entered the supply chain and reached pharmacy shelves.
The point of failure was not the customer. It was the manufacturer, the inspection system and the regulatory apparatus that failed to detect the problem. Yet the burden of the response has fallen elsewhere.
The new rules will make access more cumbersome for ordinary patients suffering from seasonal coughs, allergies and minor respiratory infections. They will generate additional consultations, increase healthcare costs and impose new procedural requirements on citizens. Whether they will significantly alter access to cough syrups is far less certain.
In much of India, prescription-only medicines are already available with remarkable ease. Antibiotics, steroids, sedatives and a host of Schedule H drugs frequently change hands without formal prescriptions. Unless enforcement practices undergo a fundamental transformation, many pharmacies are likely to continue dispensing cough syrups much as they always have.
This raises an obvious question: if the problem was contamination during manufacture, why is the solution focused on retail access?
Supporters of the measure argue, with justification, that certain codeine- and dextromethorphan-containing syrups are frequently misused. Recreational consumption among adolescents and young adults is a genuine concern. Restricting access may help address that problem.
But misuse and contamination are different issues. One concerns consumer behaviour; the other concerns manufacturing standards and regulatory vigilance. Conflating the two risks obscuring the lesson of the original tragedy.
The uncomfortable reality is that India often responds to institutional failures by imposing additional obligations on citizens. When examination systems fail, students bear the consequences of cancelled tests. When cyber fraud proliferates, restrictions are imposed on bank customers. When pharmaceutical oversight falters, patients are asked to navigate new compliance requirements.
The burden travels downward.
None of this absolves manufacturers of responsibility, nor does it suggest that all cough syrups should remain freely available. But public policy should target the source of risk before regulating its victims.
The lesson of the cough syrup scandals is not that Indians enjoyed excessive freedom to purchase medicines. It is that contaminated medicines should never have left the factory gates in the first place.
By making cough syrups prescription-only, the government has chosen to regulate the point of sale rather than the point of failure. That may be administratively convenient. Whether it makes Indians any safer remains a much harder question.
These pieces are being published as they have been received – they have not been edited/fact-checked by ThePrint.