The Good Atheist

Could it be? Could Canadian pharmacists finally start cluing in that selling unlicensed health remedies is a terrible fucking idea? The National Association of Pharmacy Regulatory Authorities (their cryptic acronym is NARPA) have taken a stance against so-called natural health remedies, saying that unless they can obtain a license from the government, pharmacists should avoid selling them.

Finally a bit of common sense, although it doesn’t go far enough in my opinion (since you could licence any product so long as it’s found to do no harm). Natural remedies fall into two categories; either they sell products that do absolutely nothing (like homeopathic solutions), or they contain active ingredients who’s concentration and potency are often improperly measured (presumably because these guys aren’t exactly expert scientists). Any medicine that can potentially heal can also potentially harm you. Luckily, since most of these remedies don’t do jack shit, they’ve never had to worry about regulation. Basically, the whole “industry” is less regulated than international waters.

I love how in this article, the main defense against this hard stance is that people will lose their jobs.

“We are talking about job loss, we are talking about a lot of income loss, we are talking about product stuck in warehouses that cannot be sold,” Jean-Yves Dionne, a spokesman for the Canadian Health Food Association, said in an interview.

The industry is worth about 2 billion dollars a year, but considering the vast majority of them sells solutions of diluted water or wax, it’s no great loss that these scammers will be out of work. Perhaps they should take the opportunity to go to school and learn a trade that’s actually useful to society.