As a result of rising levels of abuse in recent years, Sweden's Läkemedelsverket (Medical Products Agency) has banned the sale of paracetamol in supermarkets.
Läkemedelsverket, which plays a comparable role to that of the Food and Drug Administration in the US, has outlawed the sale of painkillers in large-scale retail outlets because of a doubling of paracetamol-induced poisonings between 2000 and 2013, according to a report on Swedish website thelocal.se.
Rolf Gedeborg, a Läkemedelsverket researcher, was quoted by the news website as saying, “We see a clear increase in the number of poisoning cases that are essentially self-destructive acts, namely impulsive acts where you know there is a connection with availability. When availability increased, so did this problem."
GlaxoSmithKline, which produces Alvedon and Panodil, the two most popular brands of paracetamol in Sweden, was reported to have said by LSA, “We cannot conclude that the selling [of paracetamol] by large-scale distributors is responsible [for the spike in poisonings caused by it].”
The ban will come into effect on 1 November.
© 2015 European Supermarket Magazine – your source for the latest retail news. Article written by Peter Donnelly.
