The food and drug control department has suspended licence of 15 chemists in the city for sale of habit-forming schedule-H drugs without proper prescription.

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A release by the department stated that it has also freezed distribution of 10 lakh bottles of medicines, mostly cough syrups, worth Rs4 crore. All these medicines had Codeine as the main ingredient.

The department, while examining the bottles found that the manufacturers had failed to follow the prescribed rule under section 96 of the Food and Cosmetic Act. As per the rule, such medicines should carry the generic name (chemical) on the label but in this case there was no such mention on the bottles seized.

The medical shops which had their licences suspended were in Motera, Sabarmati, Jamalpur, Behrampura, Odhav and Maninagar areas of the city. "In all we had checked some 50 to 60 shops, of which 15 were found selling these drugs without prescription," said a source in the department.

In case of medicines that were manufactured outside the state, the matter has been referred to the drug controller.

In all, distribution of 22 brands, mostly cough syrups of various pharmaceutical companies, including Cipla, Zydus Cadila, Wockhardt and Pfizer among others were stopped. The release further said that of the bottles seized, the largest share is that of the medicine Corex, a cough syrup, sold by Pfizer. Earlier on the basis of a market intelligence report, Dr HD Koshiya had asked the intelligence wing of his department to keep an eye on top selling medicines in the west zone. The department had carried out the checking to see if the sale of a certain medicine had led to its spurious version flooding the market.