Abstract
Objectives. The study provides an assessment of dispensing practices, from a legal perspective, in Egyptian private community pharmacies that contribute to narcotic drug abuse. Methods. A mixed research methods approach was used, in three consecutive phases (exploratory, descriptive, and explanatory phase), between January and July, 2018. Key findings. Only 5.3% of surveyed private community pharmacies were registered for a narcotics license, due to legal and security constraints, with very limited profit (62.7%). 5.9% of distributors were able to evade inspection. Regular (annual) inspections were performed in 93.8 % of pharmacies. Pharmacies retained purchasing (43.2%) and sales (24.7%) records, where their primary reasons were financial and drug inspection (82.5% for purchasing records, and 76.7% for sales respectively). Cancellation of Pharmacist commissioning was 10% - mainly due to appointments in unacceptable locations (55.8%). Conclusions. Only by combining the above study phases was it revealed that dispensing malpractice and evasion of drug inspection facilitated illegal trading. Cancelation of commissioning should be controlled to avoid a shortage of drug inspectors, thus improving the ability of the government to enforce laws and new regulations such, as expanding the working hours of inspectors, increasing the salary of drug inspectors and applying mystery shopping methods should be developed.