Q&A Impact of withdrawl: Keith Wypszynski, GMDC

In October, the Food and Drug Administration hosted a joint advisory committee to discuss the appropriateness of cough-cold products marketed for use in children. While experts continue to weigh in on whether marketing OTC products for kids is good or bad, Drug Store News caught up with Keith Wypyszynski, vice president of business development and chief member officer of the Global Market Development Center’s for some insight on how this news could potentially impact the supply chain.

Drug Store News: What is the GMDC’s take on the October kids cough-cold FDA advisory committee meeting?

Wypyszynski: If you’re a consumer, and particularly in this case, a parent, they relied on these products when a child had a cough, a cold or sniffle. We know that, in a lot of cases to comfort those children, [these medicines] were an important way to relieve those symptoms. We have always believed that the data show that they are very safe when used appropriately, and have been for a long time. Having them conveniently available, especially at retail, to assist those consumers is of great importance to consumers.

The voluntary recall of infant cough-cold products was due to the potential misuse of how the medicines were being administered, not really the product safety.

To have these products [potentially] pulled off the market will leave a lot of consumers looking for something because their children are still going to be suffering.

DrSN: What would be the potential ramifications of a pulled kids cough-cold set?

Wypyszynski: If you look at overall cough-cold, it’s $4 billion at retail. When you have that large of a sales category, it plays an important role. If those products were suddenly not available to consumers, even just the kids set, you’re going to have a couple things happen. First, the pharmacies and doctors offices will become a lot busier because consumers will be looking for some relief. Second, consumers will be searching for alternative products, that could either be natural remedies or vapor rubs, which will see an increase in sales.

If parents were to take it upon themselves to administer cough-cold products marketed against adults to their children, based on prior experience, you’re going to go back to the issues of incorrect dosing, which caused a lot of these problems from the start. That would just cause a bigger issue moving forward than actually addressing the issue, and may even start placing those adult products at risk from an incorrect dosing standpoint.