Pharmacy Law and Ethics Questions and Answers

Answer: C

The Indian Pharmacopoeia Commission is located at Ghaziabad.

The IPC is an autonomous body under the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, based in Ghaziabad, Uttar Pradesh. It publishes the Indian Pharmacopoeia, the official book of standards for drugs in India, and also the National Formulary of India, and it coordinates the Pharmacovigilance Programme of India.

New Delhi, Mumbai and Hyderabad are trap answers: they are large centres for drug regulation and industry, but the Commission itself is not based in any of them.

Answer: C

The Central Drugs Laboratory is at Calcutta (Kolkata).

The Central Drugs Laboratory was set up under the Drugs Act of 1940, now the Drugs and Cosmetics Act, as the national statutory laboratory for testing the quality of drugs. It is the final authority when a drug sample's test result is disputed, and it remains in Kolkata.

Delhi, Mumbai and Bhopal are distractors: the laboratory the question asks about was founded in Calcutta.

Answer: D

The answer is None of these.

Narcotic drugs and psychotropic substances are dealt with in Schedule X of the Drugs and Cosmetics Rules (and are separately controlled under the NDPS Act, 1985). Schedule X is not among the options.

The schedules offered cover other things. Schedule N lists the minimum equipment for the efficient running of a pharmacy. Schedules C and C1 cover biological and special products such as sera, vaccines, insulin, digitalis and ergot preparations. Schedule H lists prescription drugs.

Answer: B

NPPA stands for The National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority.

The NPPA was set up in 1997 under the Department of Pharmaceuticals (Ministry of Chemicals and Fertilizers). It fixes and revises the ceiling prices of scheduled drugs, enforces the Drugs (Prices Control) Order, monitors the prices of other medicines and recovers overcharged amounts from companies.

The other expansions, with 'Pharmacy', 'Policy' or 'Pharma ... of drug', are near-misses of the official name.

Answer: B

The answer is Schedule X.

Ketamine has well-known abuse potential as a recreational dissociative drug, and it is also controlled as a psychotropic substance under the NDPS Act. Schedule X of the Drugs and Cosmetics Rules is the schedule for such habit-forming drugs, and the Board's key places ketamine injection in it. Schedule X drugs must be kept under lock and key and sold only against a prescription in duplicate, with one copy kept by the pharmacist.

Schedule H and H1 cover ordinary prescription drugs (H1 with an extra register, for some antibiotics and anti-TB drugs), and Schedule G drugs carry a caution to be taken only under medical supervision. Those controls are looser than ketamine's.

Answer: C

The sixth edition of the Indian Pharmacopoeia was published in 2010.

The editions run: 1955 (first), 1966, 1985, 1996, 2007 (fifth), 2010 (sixth), 2014, 2018 and 2022 (ninth). The editions since 2007 have been published by the Indian Pharmacopoeia Commission.

So 2007 is the fifth edition, and 2009 and 2012 are not edition years.

Answer: B

The column above the liquid is filled with nitrogen.

The pharmacopoeial thermometers used, for example, in melting-point determination are mercury-in-glass instruments in which the space above the mercury is filled with an inert gas, nitrogen. The gas pressure stops the mercury thread from separating and the mercury from vaporising at high temperatures, and an inert gas does not react with it.

Oxygen would oxidise the mercury. Carbon dioxide and helium are not the gases the pharmacopoeia specifies.

Answer: C

The Pharmacy Act was passed in 1948.

The Pharmacy Act, 1948 regulates the profession and practice of pharmacy in India. It set up the Pharmacy Council of India and the State Pharmacy Councils, which keep the register of pharmacists, and it lets the Council prescribe the minimum standard of education for qualifying as a pharmacist.

1940 is the year of the Drugs and Cosmetics Act, which regulates drugs rather than the pharmacy profession, and 1945 and 1950 are not the year of the Pharmacy Act.

Answer: C

The provisions are in Chapter IV-A.

Chapter IV-A, inserted into the Drugs and Cosmetics Act, 1940 by an amendment in 1964, deals with Ayurvedic, Siddha and Unani drugs: their manufacture and sale, the Ayurvedic, Siddha and Unani Drugs Technical Advisory Board, and the meaning of misbranded, adulterated and spurious drugs of these systems.

Chapter II deals with the Drugs Technical Advisory Board, the Central Drugs Laboratory and the Drugs Consultative Committee. Chapter III covers the import of drugs and cosmetics. Chapter V contains miscellaneous provisions.

Answer: B

Digitalis and ergot preparations are in Schedule C1.

Schedules C and C1 list biological and special products that need particular care in manufacture. Schedule C1 covers products other than parenteral ones, including drugs of the digitalis group and their preparations, and ergot and its preparations, among other special products.

Schedule C covers the injectable and biological products such as sera, vaccines and insulin. Schedule D1 relates to information required for imported drugs. Schedule X lists narcotic and psychotropic drugs.