Where drug packaging wears a "Halo": secure pharmaceutical packaging may be an accepted necessity but consumers want more convenience - Consumer Corner - child-resistant and senior-friendly packaging - Brief Article

Food & Drug Packaging, Dec, 2001 by Mona Doyle

Since Johnson & Johnson turned Tylenol's tampering tragedy of 20 years ago into a Cinderella story of industry concern and creativity, attitudes toward drug packaging continue to reflect appreciation of the problems the industry has worked to resolve.

Consumers are impressed with efforts to develop packaging that's safe, child-resistant and senior-friendly. While consumers hate high prices and resent hearing about billion dollar drug sales, they generally believe the drug industry takes protective packaging seriously.

But a ConsmerNetwork Dialog on Drug Packaging with a national cross section of shoppers revealed consumer problems on both the prescription and the over-the-counter (OTC) side.

Here are the top five problems consumers have encountered with drug packaging:

* Difficulty in administering the product from the package

* The package's inability to represent true product size

* Confusion in differentiating generics from brands

* Print on packages getting smaller and harder to read

* Blister packaging is awkward

Although consumers may find hard-to-open drug packages more tolerable than hard-to-open food or beverage products, they think drug packaging should be simple to understand and products easy to administer.

Yet many prescription products are hard to dispense economically or administer with confidence. For example, Norvartis's Miacalcin[R] makes extensive demands on patients.

Packaged with two bottles and costing what has been described as "an arm and two legs," the bottles must be counter-intuitively refrigerated before opening.

Once opened, the bottles must remain at room temperature, be assembled and then administered to alternate nostrils on alternating nights, straining the memories of many users.

Another issue is most packages don't mention the product's actual size. Tiny tablets like estradiols and SmithKline Beecham's Paxil[R] are too small for thick or stiff finger handling and pill cutting. Many drugs and herbals are too large and difficult to swallow.

Consumers not only want to know how large or small capsules or pills are before purchasing--they want to know exactly what they are buying.

As the shelf-presence of generics grows, many consumers are irritated by how difficult it is differentiating them from brand products. Since aping the brand helps generic packagers communicate their functional equivalence, the strategic and graphic challenges need more attention than they are getting.

Complaints about small print sizes on OTC packages will be addressed next year when the Food and Drug Administration's (FDA) Drug Facts regulations change the face of OTC packages. Packages may have to get larger to accommodate expanded information.

This will further frustrate consumers by big boxes containing small vials or tubes and large bottles containing "more cotton than pills." Compliance packaging needs are real, and solutions including unit dose packaging in plastic and foil blisters are part of our future.

But many consumers find blisters cumbersome, hard to store and associated with higher prices.

Ironically, the industry has made such strides that consumers have come to expect it can do anything and everything well--at least for a price. F&DP

The author, Mona Doyle, is the CEO of The Consumer Network Inc., an organization that regularly takes the pulse of consumers on packaging issues. She publishes The Shopper Report newsletter. Contact her at Mona@MonaDoyle.com