Dongguan City: allow supermarkets, 24-hour convenience stores and other places to operate Class B over-the-counter drugs

In the future, citizens will buy Category B OTC and go directly to the supermarket or convenience store next to the community instead of going to the pharmacy

Distribute documents in one place, let supermarkets and convenience stores sell drugs

On November 23, Dongguan City held a press conference and stated that in order to make it more convenient for ordinary people to buy medicines, it allows supermarkets, 24-hour convenience stores and other places to operate Class B over-the-counter drugs

It is understood that the above-mentioned places selling Class B over-the-counter drugs must meet the following conditions:

1.

2.

The market supervision department emphasized that during the epidemic prevention and control period, newly established companies that only sell Category B non-prescription drugs fully fulfill their main responsibilities, and do a good job in the registration and reporting of drug personnel who purchase the "List of Drugs that Need to be Registered and Reported During the Epidemic Period", but found that they were not strictly implemented , Resolutely deal with it in accordance with the law

In addition, the sales of drugs in supermarkets and 24-hour convenience stores shall not exceed the permitted scope, and the sales of Class A drugs and Class B prescription drugs beyond the scope are equivalent to selling drugs without a license and will be investigated and punished in accordance with the law

For companies that obtain the "Pharmaceutical Business License" through false information or deceptive means, the relevant license will be revoked in accordance with the relevant provisions of the New Drug Administration Law, the corresponding application will not be accepted within 10 years, and a fine of 500,000 yuan up to 5 million yuan will be imposed

If the circumstances are serious, the legal representative, the main person in charge, the directly responsible person in charge and other responsible persons shall be fined 20,000 yuan up to 200,000 yuan, and drug production and business activities shall be prohibited for 10 years, and the public security organs may impose a fine Detention for more than 5 days but not more than 15 days

Non-pharmacies sell medicines, there is no size limit

On August 23, the Guangdong Provincial Drug Administration issued the "Detailed Rules for the Implementation of Guangdong Pharmaceutical Retail License Acceptance", which was formally implemented on October 1, with a validity period of 5 years

The document requires that the notification and commitment system be implemented for the approval of the application for the establishment of enterprises that only deal in Category B over-the-counter drugs, and the city and county drug supervision and administration departments shall be empowered to compile guidelines for notification of commitments to facilitate the applicant's business processing

If an enterprise applies for only Class B over-the-counter drugs, the area of ​​its business premises should be commensurate with the variety and scale of its business, but there are no specific requirements

This provision means that for non-prescription category B, drug sales are no longer the full-time job of pharmacies.

Intensified internal volume, professional pharmacies are the way out

Cyberlan-pharmacy manager once said that the policy intends to divide pharmaceutical retail companies into two types: convenience and professional:

Convenience: Mainly sells Class B over-the-counter drugs, which can be sold in shopping malls, supermarkets, convenience stores, hotels and many other business premises to facilitate the purchase and use of the masses

Professional type: mainly relying on the original physical pharmacy, combined with technology, to provide professional medication services for patients with chronic diseases and special populations

It should be noted that the identity of "convenience pharmacy" is now no longer exclusive to offline pharmacies, but refers to more general offline stores

Although supermarkets and convenience stores have divided the cakes of pharmacies, this has also forced them to transform into "specialized pharmacies

As a representative of professional pharmacies, DTP pharmacy is an excellent "potential stock"
.
According to the data of "DTP Pharmacy Special Research Report 2021", the sales scale of DTP pharmacy in 2020 is 19 billion yuan, which is 2.
4 times higher than the 8 billion in 2015
.

According to the company's annual report information, in 2020, the sales of ordinary people's DTP stores were 1.
07 billion yuan, an increase of 36% year-on-year, far exceeding the company's revenue growth of 19.
75% year-on-year
.
In addition, Supai Health, Yuanxin Technology, and Dajia Weikang, which focus on DTP pharmacies, have also chosen to go on the market recently
.

Type B OTC operation, open more places

On August 28, 2019, the General Office of the State Council issued the "Opinions on Accelerating the Development of Circulation and Promoting Commercial Consumption" and stated that it is necessary to accelerate the development of chain convenience stores and carry out pilot projects to simplify the approval procedures for the operation of Class B non-prescription drugs
.

In fact, long before the state issued a document, many areas of the country had already liberalized the business reform of "category B over-the-counter drugs"
.

In October 2018, 7 government departments in Beijing jointly issued the "Measures to Further Promote the Development of Convenience Stores" and stipulated that chain convenience stores can operate Class B over-the-counter drugs in accordance with relevant requirements.
In March 2019, 50 convenience stores in Beijing started Pilot
.

In April 2020, the Inner Mongolia Food and Drug Administration issued a document stating that it encourages and supports brand chain convenience stores to apply for retail operation of Category B over-the-counter drugs, and proactively assists in the optimization of approvals and service guidance
.

In March 2020, Gansu expressly stipulated that commercial entities such as shopping malls, supermarkets, and convenience stores are allowed to set up drug sales counters in business premises to sell Class B over-the-counter drugs; in addition, drug retail chain enterprises should be encouraged to handle drug services, drug distribution, and special services.
Disease management, chronic disease management, health and welfare management and other services, explore the direction of "specialized pharmacies"

Incomplete statistics.
At present, Guangdong, Beijing, Gansu, Shandong, Sichuan, Jiangxi and other places have released relevant documents to liberalize the operation of Class B non-prescription drugs
.