Lucknow: The food and drug administration department of the Uttar Pradesh government has banned sale of more than one unit of codeine-based cough syrups, because codeine is an opium-based drug, official sources said on Wednesday. According to controller of drugs in UP AK Jain, it has pain-relieving elements, but because of opium one may get addicted to it. He fixed the number of units a company depot and store and sell to ensure that it is not misused.
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According to the order, the company depots can store any amount of codeine-based cough syrup but sell only 500 units of this drug. Although whole-sellers can keep 1,000 units of the drug but sell only 100 units of the syrup. Nevertheless, retailers will not be able to store more than 100 units of the syrup and sell only one unit to a customer. According to sources, the UP government’s internal survey suggests that the consumption of such codeine-based drugs is very high in UP, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, West Bengal and Karnataka.