Let's regulate pharmacies, not pharmacists.

Byline: Russell Sadler For The Register-Guard

A growing number of pharmacists are refusing to fill prescriptions for Plan B. This contraceptive has a good record of preventing pregnancies if taken within 72 hours of unprotected sexual relations.

The protesting pharmacists insist that prescribing Plan B offends their religious or moral sensibilities and they should not be forced to violate their consciences.

Oregon's State Board of Pharmacy, struggling to resolve acts of conscience with the need of consumers for lawful prescription drugs, recently approved a policy statement that makes it a duty of licensed pharmacists who refuse to fill a prescription as a matter of conscience to refer consumers to another pharmacist who will. The policy statement also requires each pharmacy to draft procedures outlining a pharmacist's ethical, moral and professional responsibilities.

The Board of Pharmacy is out on a slippery slope, because it is reacting to a deliberately contrived political issue by trying to regulate individuals rather than businesses.

For the sake of argument, let's agree on two principles: 1) No person should be required by law to violate their conscience; 2) every consumer who goes to a pharmacy has a right to have their prescription for any lawful drug filled promptly and without moralizing.

A pharmacy already, by law, must make sure the consumer has received the correct prescription, understands the possible side effects and interaction with other drugs and knows whether a generic drug may be as effective and less expensive.

The Board of Pharmacy's statement forbids pharmacists from discussing their religious or moral beliefs with consumers.

That probably violates the Oregon Constitution. Article I, Section 8 unambiguously states, `No law shall be passed restraining the free expression of opinion, or restricting the right to speak, write or print freely on any subject whatever; but every person shall be responsible for the abuse of this right.' But employers are under no such restrictions. They can forbid pharmacists from moralizing at customers as a condition of employment.

The problem with writing rules for regulating pharmacists' behavior is that we don't know what prescription which religious group might deem immoral tomorrow. Religious objections to long-standing methods of contraception are resurfacing. And pharmaceutical innovations will certainly produce new drugs that will offend some pharmacists.

But that is largely irrelevant.

Oregon's responsibility is to assure that any legal prescription will be promptly filled. That means making the pharmacy, not the pharmacist, responsible. If one pharmacist has moral or religious objections, the consumer must be able to promptly turn to another pharmacist to fill the prescription and not rely on the protesting pharmacist to refer the consumer. It should be the `duty' of the pharmacy to have sufficient employees on hand to fill any lawful prescription.

There will be staffing problems in smaller towns where a Mom-and-Pop operation may be the only pharmacy. But the problems of small pharmacies should not become an excuse for inaction or exemption.

Pharmacists who accumulate many moral objections or who want to use the dispensing of prescription drugs as a soapbox, will have some trouble keeping a job. But the state's responsibility is not to assure convenient employment for the conscience-stricken. The state's responsibility is merely to assure that no one is compelled to violate their conscience as a condition of employment.

That is why it makes sense to give pharmacies the duty to fill any lawful prescription, instead of trying to regulate the behavior of the individual pharmacist.

Political commentator Russell Sadler lives in Eugene.