Kenko.com and Wellnet Sues Japanese Government around Drug e-Commerce Ban
Today, two online pharmacy stores Kenko.com and Wellnet had a press conference to announce that they had filed a lawsuit against Japanese government. They claims that the ban of online and postal drug sale, which is going to be effective from June 1st, is against the constitution.
After we reported Rakuten, Kenko.com and others claimed the flaw of the new regulations last November, there has been several meetings held by Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare (MHLW) with the parties concerned. The biggest e-commerce mall Rakuten and its CEO Hiroshi Mikitani also attended the meetings and was adopting a stern posture, with one-million online signature gathering. MHLW solicited comments from the public last month and got 85% of disapprove, but MHLW answered "The purpose of asking public comments is to know an ideas we might have overlooked, not for numbers." [J]
The act itself has no statements that the online/postal drug sales should be banned, but MHLW's "ordinance of the ministry" was brought up at the very last moment of the discussion meetings to make online/postal be dangerous from consumer protection standpoint, whilst selling in person at drug stores have no risk even the shopkeeper is a part-time, no-licensed person and the buyer is not an identified user.
See Also:
MiAU's public comments for MHLW's ordinance of the ministry (MiAU - Movements for the Internet Active Users) [J]
