The current emergency ban on new prescriptions for puberty suppressing hormones risks “criminalising” pharmacists, the Royal Pharmaceutical Society has warned. 

The ban on private UK and overseas prescribers issuing prescriptions for puberty blockers to new patients to treat gender dysphoria, which was upheld by a high court ruling this week, makes it a criminal offence to supply these drugs to under-18s outside the terms of the order introduced by the former Conservative government.

The RPS said yesterday (July 31) that it has raised concerns with Government officials that the ban could “result in pharmacists declining to supply these medicines at all for fear of prosecution,” despite the fact that they can still legitimately be supplied to gender dysphoric under-18s who are already in treatment and to under-18s diagnosed with very early onset of puberty. 

The RPS said it was “concerned about the potential criminalisation of pharmacists who dispense these medicines and calling for patients to have timely access to specialist care pathways for support”. 

It also argued that the rush to implement the ban with no lead period may mean there are healthcare professionals who are not yet aware of the rules, commenting: “The absence of advance notice means a prosecution could take place which would not be in the public interest.”

“It is challenging for pharmacy teams to support children and young people with gender incongruence and gender dysphoria due to the lack of comprehensive regulatory or clinical guidelines,” said the RPS. 

Earlier this week, health minister Karin Smyth defended Labour’s decision to maintain the ban by saying it is “simply not possible” to expect pharmacists to establish whether prescriptions had been issued in accordance with the emergency legislation. 

The British Medical Association said yesterday that its council had voted to “publicly critique the Cass review” that informed the ban. The BMA called for a “pause” to the implementation of the review’s findings and argued that “weaknesses in the methodologies” used by Dr Hilary Cass point to a need for further research.