Pharmacist avoids jail for illegally advertising prescription-only Viagra

A Pharmacist from Manchester, who advertised Viagra illegally, has luckily avoided an immediate jail sentence.

Mr William Parsons advertised Viagra and other prescription medication used to treat male impotence on his website Potency.co.uk which has now been removed from the web.

Parsons, who also ran a pharmacy in the Peak District, was given a suspended nine-month jail term at London's Southwark Crown Court on Thursday after previously being convicted of three counts of advertising prescription-only medicine.

Passing sentence, Judge Peter Testar said: "This defendant has behaved in a way that he knows was illegal. That's the mischief of what he has done. He sought to defend the indefensible."

The court heard Parsons ran the website and the Hayfield Pharmacy in Derbyshire from 1999 until he sold the combined businesses and premises for just under £500,000 in 2007.

Parsons used blank prescriptions obtained from a doctor in Cyprus to prescribe the drugs himself to customers visiting the website. The site boasted "special offers" on the drugs. Kennedy Talbot, prosecuting, estimated Parsons made more than £1,000 a month from sales.

An inspector from regulatory body the Medicine and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) visited the pharmacy in 2006 where the blank prescriptions were discovered. The inspector subsequently visited the website where he discovered the illegal offers.

Parsons was warned by the MHRA he would have to change his website in order to comply with the law, but the pharmacist refused.

Judge Testar said: "He carried on with the plainly illegal activity of advertising prescription only drugs. He simply decided he wasn't going to comply with the law. He thought if he carried on he wouldn't be stopped. These are regulations that are there for the protection of the public. The requirement of a prescription is there for a good reason."

The Judge said he had intended to pass an immediate custodial sentence but had decided not to as Parsons was the main provider of care for his sick wife. The nine-month sentence was suspended for two years. Parsons was also ordered to carry out 150 hours unpaid work in the community.

Prostate drug available without prescription in UK

A news drug to treat the urinary symptoms of prostate enlargement, previously available as a p.o.m, is to be sold over the counter in UK pharmacies to men aged 45 to 75 years from Wednesday.

The move is the latest example of Britain taking a lead in switching medicines off prescription in a drive to promote self care.

Flomax Relief, or tamsulosin hydrochloride, for benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH), will cost 16.99 pounds ($25.54) for a pack of 28 capsules lasting four weeks, maker Boehringer Ingelheim of Germany said.

It is the first time the medicine has been made available without prescription anywhere in the world.

The launch also represents a first in bringing a product for men's health into the over-the-counter (OTC) arena, although Pfizer (PFE.N) has been exploring a non-prescription version of its popular erectile dysfunction drug Viagra.

The U.S. drugmaker piloted the sale of Viagra in selected pharmacies in the north of England in 2007, but was knocked back in 2008 in its attempt to get European approval for Viagra without prescription. Pfizer said at the time it still believed the drug met the guidelines for OTC status.