STORE TILLS ALERTED TO OVERDOSE SHOPPERS

SUPERMARKETS are to introduce smart till systems and retrain staff to stop
people buying lethal quantities of pain-killing drugs.

Under legislation which comes into effect on Sept 16, pack sizes of
painkillers, such as paracetamol, will be reduced to discourage overdosing.

Packs from supermarkets and corner shops will contain no more than 16
tablets or capsules. Packs of 32 will be available only from pharmacies,
which will also be able to sell 100 tablets in certain circumstances.

There was concern, however, that suicidal customers would be able to buy as
many packs of painkillers from supermarkets as they wanted because there
would be no pharmacist to control the purchase.

To prevent this supermarkets are reviewing their procedures. Asda has
already introduced a system that will flash up a message on the check-out
till when the maximum number of painkillers is reached.

An Asda spokesman said it was a similar system to one which reminds the
cashier to ask if a person buying alcohol is 18. Staff were having weekly
briefings on the new painkiller legislation. Waitrose is considering
whether to introduce a similar system.

A spokesman for Tesco said that it had already changed the sizes of its
own-brand packs and would also change its tills. He said staff were trained
in explaining to customers why they could not buy large quantities of
painkillers.

There are between 30,000 and 40,000 hospital referrals for paracetamol
overdoses every year and between 100 and 150 deaths. As many as 5,000
people are admitted to hospital for aspirin overdoses and about 60 die.

The Government announced plans last year to introduce the legislation
because of concern that many of the suicides were spontaneous attempts by
people with bathroom cabinets full of such drugs.

The Department of Health hopes that smaller packs with new warnings will
cut hospital admissions and deaths by at least 10 per cent.

Last week it was disclosed that millions of paracetamol tablets had been
sold with the wrong instructions printed on the packets. Half-a-million
packs were pulled off supermarket shelves on Friday but 250,000 packets had
already been sold.

Checked-by: Mike Gogulski