COMMENT | Putting poison in the Poisons Act
COMMENT | The Poisons Act 1952 (Amendment) Bill 2022 being tabled for its second reading in Parliament has the hidden potential to disrupt the present delivery of medical care. What this bill does is to lump bona fide use of medicines with criminal trafficking of drugs.
The objective of the original Poison Act 1952 is to regulate the importation, possession, manufacture, compounding, storage, transport, sale and use of poisons. It was not designed to regulate the worldwide criminal use and abuse of registered substances in particular psychotropics and precursors. These criminal activities should always be dealt with with appropriate laws and under the Penal Code.
Since its enactment...
COMMENT | The Poisons Act 1952 (Amendment) Bill 2022 being tabled for its second reading in Parliament has the hidden potential to disrupt the present delivery of medical care. What this bill does is to lump bona fide use of medicines with criminal trafficking of drugs.
The objective of the original Poison Act 1952 is to regulate the importation, possession, manufacture, compounding, storage, transport, sale and use of poisons. It was not designed to regulate the worldwide criminal use and abuse of registered substances in particular psychotropics and precursors. These criminal activities should always be dealt with with appropriate laws and under the Penal Code.
Since its enactment, the Poisons Act and its regulations have been regularly updated as needed. So the claim by some quarters that these amendments are needed as the Act is archaic is not totally correct. The Health Ministry should clear the air and explain the real reasons for these amendments.
We were previously informed that the amendments were meant to specifically address the absence of provisions for important issues like counterfeit medicines, trafficking of psychotropics, precursor diversion, and computerised record transmission.
The existing Act also has no provision for a specific user licence for control and curbing irregularities in the use of chemical substances for psychotropics and precursors as required under our obligations to the International Convention on psychotropics and precursors.
Unfortunately, the amendments call for a blanket increase in fines and jail terms for virtually all offences prescribed in the Act. All poison item-related activities, be it as part of bona fide medical and healthcare, are lumped together with criminal activities and painted with the same brush.
The amended Act has no provision to differentiate proper use of medical and healthcare products and criminal activities dealing with trafficking and diversion. This opens the enforcement process to potential abuse.
In the daily running of clinics and pharmacies, minor breaches due to lapses of administration or human oversight do occur. Such lapses also occur in public hospitals and pharmacies where they are usually addressed with in-house training and administrative measures. What then is the justification for this disparate approach to enforcement when dealing with the private sector?
High penalties
Contrary to usual practice, the amendments have included provisions for micromanaging the storage and sales of poisons. The law should only provide broad provisions and not micromanagement details, which should subsequently be spelt out in the supporting regulations.
Offences of a technical nature, eg. recording/labelling, should be clearly identified by amendments and appropriate minimum penalty should be set and allowed to be compounded.
Surely, our MPs cannot justify that the blanket increase of fines from 1000 percent to 4000 percent (as called for in some provisions) is needed to keep bona fide medical and healthcare professionals in line.
As for the increase in jail terms, do our MPs really think that the ever-present threat of serving jail time for our healthcare professionals is the best way to encourage appropriate and compassionate care for our rakyat?
The increased quantum of fines, even if compounded to a reduced 50 percent, will mean that medical practitioners can also face deregistration by the Malaysian Medical Council (MMC) if charged under this Act for a mere administrative breach. Clearly, this is not good for the long term health of our rakyat.
There is a need for a more deterrent approach for offences of a criminal nature (examples: diversion, trafficking and counterfeiting). This should be addressed with other appropriate laws and not just conveniently lumped into the generic amendments to the Poisons Act.
We strongly urge our MPs on both sides of the House to examine closely the perverse long-term effect if this Bill is passed in its current form. It will disrupt the present cost-effective one-stop outpatient care system which is the backbone of primary care for a large proportion of our rakyat.
We urge that this Bill be withdrawn and subject to a Regulatory Impact Analysis involving all stakeholders.
DR STEVEN CHOW is president of the Federation of Private Medical Practitioners’ Associations Malaysia.
The views expressed here are those of the author/contributor and do not necessarily represent the views of Malaysiakini.
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