Abstract

The British Pharmacopoeia exists to set standards for the purity and consistency of drugs. Standards for drugs already in the BP are continually reviewed and improved, and new substances and preparations are being introduced at an increasingly rapid rate.¹ We can be justly proud of the BP, though not of the way its standards are enforced. Inadequate enforcement is mainly due to lack of a nationally effective system for the quality control of drugs,² but various anomalies also cause difficulty.