Category: Controlled drugs

Understand the legal requirements for controlled drugs, including prescribing, storage, record-keeping, and compliance with CD schedules.

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Selling codeine and dihydrocodeine Pharmacy medicines

Certain medicines containing codeine or dihydrocodeine may be sold without a prescription as Pharmacy medicines. However, these medicines are opioids with recognised risks of dependence, misuse and overdose. Combination analgesics may also cause serious harm through excessive consumption of their other ingredients, such as paracetamol or ibuprofen.

Pharmacy owners, responsible pharmacists and other pharmacy professionals must therefore ensure that requests are appropriately assessed and that these medicines are supplied safely.

The legal position comes from several sources:

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Minimum legal retention periods for pharmacy records

Pharmacies create and retain many different records, including prescriptions, patient medication records, controlled drug registers, responsible pharmacist records, clinical service records, invoices, SOPs and records of interventions.

Not every pharmacy record has a specific statutory retention period.

This article identifies records for which primary legislation expressly establishes a minimum retention period. It does not include periods based solely on professional guidance, NHS policy, contractual requirements, limitation periods or recommended practice.

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Can a pharmacist prescribe and dispense the same medicine?

Pharmacist independent prescribers increasingly provide services in which they assess a patient, prescribe a medicine and arrange for it to be dispensed or supplied from the same pharmacy.

In some services, the pharmacist prescriber may personally undertake every stage. They may assess the patient, make the prescribing decision, generate the prescription, clinically check it, dispense or accuracy-check the medicine and then supply or administer it.

UK medicines legislation does not establish a general requirement that prescribing and dispensing must be undertaken by different healthcare professionals. A pharmacist may therefore prescribe and dispense or supply the same medicine, provided that each activity is lawful and the service is delivered safely.

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Dispensing prescriptions for yourself, family members or friends

Pharmacists may encounter prescriptions issued for themselves, their relatives, friends or colleagues. This may occur routinely where the person uses the pharmacy at which the pharmacist works.

Neither medicines legislation nor the General Pharmaceutical Council’s current standards expressly prohibit a pharmacist from dispensing a valid prescription merely because the patient is the pharmacist or someone with whom they have a close personal relationship.

These prescriptions can ordinarily be dispensed in the same way as prescriptions for other patients. However, the pharmacist must remain capable of exercising objective professional judgement and must not allow familiarity, personal interests or concerns about privacy to compromise the safety or integrity of the dispensing process.

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Prescriber restrictions

Doctors, dentists and veterinary surgeons acquire prescribing powers through their professional registration, although doctors must also hold a licence to practise. They have been joined by independent and supplementary prescribers from several other healthcare professions who may prescribe after completing an approved education programme and obtaining the relevant annotation on their professional register.

The existence of a legal prescribing power does not mean that a prescriber may appropriately prescribe every medicine. All prescribers must:

This article summarises the principal legal restrictions applying to each prescriber group.

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Emergency Supply of Medicines

Emergency supply allows a pharmacist to provide a medicine without a prescription in defined circumstances. It is a statutory exemption under UK medicines law and is commonly used in community pharmacy to ensure continuity of care.

Emergency supply is governed by the Human Medicines Regulations 2012:

https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2012/1916/contents

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British Military Prescriptions (FMed 296): How Community Pharmacies Should Handle Them

Military prescriptions in the UK are usually issued on FMed 296 forms rather than standard NHS FP10 forms. For community pharmacy teams, the key point is that FMed 296 prescriptions are generally intended for Ministry of Defence (MOD)-contracted pharmacies, not routine NHS pricing.

This article explains what an FMed 296 is, when it can be dispensed, and what happens if it is presented to a non-contracted pharmacy.

Military prescription handling is a mix of general medicines law and specific MOD/NHSBSA operational arrangements. The core legal framework for prescription-only medicines remains the

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European Prescriptions

Pharmacists in the UK may occasionally be presented with prescriptions issued abroad. The legal position is specific and limited—only certain prescriptions from defined countries are recognised.

This article explains which foreign prescriptions are valid, what “Europe” means in law, and what pharmacists must check before dispensing.

The supply of prescription-only medicines (POMs) is governed by the Human Medicines Regulations 2012:
https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2012/1916/contents

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Faxed and Digital Prescriptions

Pharmacies are frequently presented with faxed prescriptions, emailed copies, or photos on a patient’s phone. While these may appear convenient, they raise important legal and patient safety issues.

This article explains what is and is not legally valid, and how pharmacists should approach these situations.

Under the Human Medicines Regulations 2012:
https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2012/1916/contents