Consumer Product Safety Commission to review its test protocols. In a letter to Harold D. Stratton, HCPC is requesting a review of the child-resistant tests because of what it sees as an inequity.
The letter to the new chairman notes that there is an objective standard for cap-and-vial tests, but a more subjective criteria used to evaluate unit-dose blister and strip packaging. This results in what HCPC calls a “problematic” decision by pharmaceutical manufacturers’ legal counsel.
Although unit-dose packaging formats are widely used overseas, the same manufacturers have not embraced the same packaging in the United States “because provisions of the CPSC protocol make it cheaper and easier to use bulk bottles” regardless of whether they’re safer.
“The irony,” the group points out, “is that a primary goal of the CPCS protocol is to protect small children from accidentally ingesting drug products, but an unintended consequence of the protocol is that it discourages drug manufacturers from using packaging that will better achieve this goal.” —AO
