A drug company wants small packs of pseudoephedrine, the cold and flu decongestant that was effectively off the New Zealand market for more than a decade because of its use in making methamphetamine, moved out from behind the pharmacy counter and onto open shelves.
Reckitt Benckiser has asked Medsafe’s Medicines Classification Committee to create a new pharmacy-only category for tablets and capsules sold in packs holding no more than 240 milligrams of pseudoephedrine, which is the most an adult can take in a day under the current dose limits. The request is the first reclassification item on the agenda for the committee’s 76th meeting, to be held on 28 October. Medsafe last updated the agenda on 7 September.
Pseudoephedrine is currently a restricted medicine, which means only a pharmacist can sell it, after deciding at the counter whether it suits the customer. Under Reckitt’s proposal the small packs, for adults and children over 12, would sit on pharmacy shelves where shoppers could pick them up themselves. Larger packs of up to 720 milligrams and liquid versions would stay behind the counter, and the medicine would still be sold only in pharmacies, RNZ reported on Saturday.
The drug has had a long run of tightening rules. Pseudoephedrine was a pharmacy-only medicine in New Zealand until 2004, when it became a controlled drug, according to the history set out in Reckitt’s 31-page application. In 2011 the government made it prescription-only as part of a plan to reduce methamphetamine harm. Doctors rarely prescribed it and manufacturers let their approvals lapse, so by the start of 2024 no pseudoephedrine products were approved or available at all, the application says.
The coalition government reversed that in 2024. New regulations that came into force on 21 March 2024 changed pseudoephedrine cold and flu medicines from prescription medicines to restricted medicines, and the products were back on sale in pharmacies by the middle of that year.
The application gives a detailed picture of how much has been sold since. In the 12 months to 15 March 2026, pharmacies sold 285,802 packs containing about 6.36 million doses, according to sales figures included in the submission. Products combining pseudoephedrine with paracetamol were the biggest seller at 144,935 packs, followed by 89,840 packs of a paracetamol and antihistamine mix and 48,549 packs of pseudoephedrine on its own. Reckitt calculated that if every pack went to a different person, about 5.4 percent of New Zealanders bought one in that year, and it described usage as modest.
The company’s central argument is that the pharmacy shelf is no longer where methamphetamine makers get their raw material. “The supply and manufacture of methamphetamine use in New Zealand has shifted from small scale production, where pharmacy sourced pseudoephedrine was the main precursor used,” the application says. It says the trade has moved to large clandestine laboratories using precursor chemicals imported in bulk, to other starting chemicals, and to importing finished methamphetamine.
Reckitt cites Massey University drug market research to argue that the prescription-only rule did not choke supply, noting that the average price of methamphetamine per gram in 2025 was about a third of what it was in 2010. It also says the Pharmacy Guild and New Zealand Police have reported only a small number of isolated pseudoephedrine-related thefts from pharmacies since the products returned.
New Zealand does not require buyers to show identification or have their purchases logged on a tracking system, the application notes. Australia does both, selling pseudoephedrine as a pharmacist-only medicine and recording sales on a national database called Project Stop. Reckitt says evaluations of those overseas schemes found they did little to cut methamphetamine supply, and it does not propose any extra monitoring here. The company says it does not believe any additional surveillance after the change would be needed.
The proposed 240 milligram limit is a third of the 720 milligram packs now sold from behind the counter. By the application’s account, the United Kingdom sells pseudoephedrine as a pharmacy medicine in packs of up to 720 milligrams, while Canada allows combination cold products on open pharmacy shelves with a total limit of 3000 milligrams.
The bid is also about the other decongestant. When pseudoephedrine disappeared in 2011, many cold and flu products switched to phenylephrine. The US Food and Drug Administration proposed in November 2024 removing oral phenylephrine from the ingredients allowed in over-the-counter decongestants, after a review found it was not effective when taken by mouth, though it stressed at the time that this was only a proposed order.
In New Zealand, a class action filed in February 2025 alleges that Johnson & Johnson sold phenylephrine cold and flu products under the Sudafed PE, Codral and Benadryl names that do not work as a decongestant. Consumer NZ reported on 30 March that the High Court had given the action permission to proceed. The claims have not yet been decided.
Reckitt says phenylephrine products may not be available in New Zealand for much longer and wants an effective alternative on open shelves in time for the 2027 winter. It also stresses that its application does not depend on phenylephrine being withdrawn. Phenylephrine products in solid form, such as tablets, sold just over $9 million in the 12 months to March, the application says.
The company argues the change would save shoppers money and pharmacists time. Price comparisons in the application found behind-the-counter pseudoephedrine packs cost 41 to 59 percent more per tablet than the phenylephrine versions of the same brands. If phenylephrine were withdrawn and pseudoephedrine stayed restricted, Reckitt estimates shoppers would pay about $3.7 million a year more and pharmacists would face an extra 500,000 counter consultations a year.
Anyone can comment on the proposal before the committee meets. Comments on agenda items close at 5pm on 5 October and go to the committee secretariat at committees@health.govt.nz, according to Medsafe’s meeting timetable. The same meeting will consider a bid to make the fungal treatment terbinafine a pharmacy-only medicine for use on nails, and the classification of several new medicines, including weight-loss and diabetes drugs. Medsafe’s timetable also allows for objections to the committee’s recommendations after the meeting.
The decision will land after a winter in which New Zealand had a late flu surge, and before the next cold and flu season arrives.
Should small packs of pseudoephedrine sit on open shelves, or is a quick word with the pharmacist a sensible check? Tell us what you think in the comments below.
This article was written by AI, briefed to report the facts, hopefully without some of the bias people bring to the job 🙂
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