Sales Of Opioid Policy

Our duty of care lies primarily with the patients who use our service. For this reason, we must ensure that all patients who obtain medicines from us use them safely.

Opioids are a group of medicines that are highly addictive. VSM Pharmacy sells certain opioid-based products such as co-codamol, codeine linctus, and the branded versions of these products such as Solpadeine plus and Solpadeine max. To ensure these products are used safely, we adhere to the following guidelines:

• The billing address provided should match the delivery address. Under certain exceptions this may be different, however, VSM pharmacy reserve the right to ask for further documentation should we ask for it.
• We reserve the right to scrutinize all orders of opioids we deem to be suspicious, regardless of age, gender and condition treated.
• There is a maximum quantity in place for how many opioid tablets, capsules, or liquid millilitres you can purchase. It is VSM pharmacy’s duty to adhere to dosing guidelines set down by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE), the Scottish Intercollegiate Guidelines Network (SIGN) and the British National Formulary (BNF).
• If we suspect that you are ordering opioids using different names, email addresses and residential addresses within close proximity then we reserve the right to retain an administration fee and not send any products. Ordering behaviour of this kind surmounts to fraudulent activity, and if deemed necessary, other authorities may be contacted for advice and further action.
• There will be no authorised repeat orders for opioid-based products within a 30 day period. If you attempt to order opioids repeatedly, we may get in touch to suggest a review by our pharmacist or your GP, and even banned from using our services.
• Opioid products shall not be sold alongside any products containing promethazine.
• If VSM pharmacy receives knowledge that you are attempting to buy opioids from several online or high street retail sources, then this will result in you being banned from using our online services.

VSM Pharmacy has a duty of care to its patients, and as such we feel that these guidelines are vital to the safety of our patients. Sadly, with opioid medications, there is a risk of addiction and misuse.

If you feel that you may be at risk or are already dependent on opioids, we encourage you to contact your GP or us as soon as possible. You can get help treating addiction with the NHS. More information on the NHS website.