Madras HC bans online sale of medicines, directs Central govt to prepare guidelines

The Madras High Court has banned the sales of online medicines and has directed the Center to notify the proper guidelines and rules for the sale by January 31, 2019.

Justice P Sathyanarayana has maintained the fact that the any website or retailer can sell the medicines online only after procuring a license under the said rules and the guidelines will be finalized by the Central government.

The petitioner in the case has filed the affidavit which claimed that “As per the Drugs and Cosmetics Rules of 1945, it is not permitted to ship, mail or provide door delivery of the prescribed medicines... Yet, drugs of scheduled and non scheduled category are available online on different websites and distributed across the country. As on date, there are more than 3,500 such websites,” as reported by The Hindu.

After the online market has grown to be a billion dollar baby, and with the entry of Amazon, and Walmart acquiring Flipkart, the game of the online marketing has changed which eventually holds the future as the fashion, food and other materials are easily available online.

The affidavit further read, “While so, online sales is being happily carried on by several websites in violation of existing statutory rules... Despite repeated representations made to respondents 1 to 5 (Centre and drug control authorities), the online sale of drugs have not been restrained. There are even advertisements in leading newspapers with heavy discounts.”

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