Minister: Bad drugs may be used

Responding to questions during the Standing Finance Committee meeting today in Parliament about the quality of drugs “with instructions in Spanish and no English” being sold in Trinidad, posed by Tabaquite Member of Parliament Surujrattan Rambachan, Deyalsingh acknowledged there was a “suitcase trade” that was now flourishing because goods coming through customs were not being adequately inspected.

Deyalsingh, a pharmacist by training, said this was an issue he had been bringing up since 1981.

He noted cigarettes “and every other commodity we have a high demand for” enter the country via this suitcase trade, and noted that the 20 percent cigarette tax—due to be enforced from Thursday— will only help this trade flourish unless inspections at customs are increased.

“We have a problem with our ports of entry. We need to beef up our drug inspectorate at ports of entry. They are not there 24 hours, seven days a week. What we try to do is seize these things after the fact (and as much as we can) when we are there. At our ports of entry to make sure that not only drugs but cigarettes and everything else that come into this country are duly licensed and approved by the regulatory bodies,” he said.

Rambachan also queried the quality and quantity of site visits by drug inspectors to pharmacies, in order to ensure that a licensed pharmacist is present during opening hours. Deyalsingh said there was a shortfall in the number of CFD inspectors, and the agency was collaborating with public health inspectors to leverage resources until “we have an adequate number of officers.” He added that there was “a lot of personal responsibility” on the part of pharmacists to ensure they are safely administering drugs to patients.

“As a pharmacist you take an oath to do certain things and not do certain things. And it should not be that everything in society should be punitive; there should be some degree of ethics and morality in what we sell to the public,” he said. Rambachan asked, “Are you agreeing with me that the pharmacy industry is highly unregulated in several aspects?” Deyalsingh countered that he agreed that as a whole, many sectors of retail trade are not properly regulated.