On the subject in the title: Pharmacy supply in the UK and the questions you will be asked Working notes rather than a conclusion.
Asking about pharmacy supply on behalf of the question I keep seeing asked badly, including by me.
Framed properly it is answerable. Framed the usual way it is not, and that is most of why the previous threads went nowhere.
Date the claim and say whether it is the United Kingdom or Ireland. They are different regulatory jurisdictions and the answer is frequently different.
On pharmacy supply, the part that usually goes wrong is that the question is asked as though it has one answer. It has a range, and the width of the range is the interesting bit.
If you can post the two or three numbers you are working from, several people here will check the arithmetic rather than argue about the conclusion.
Nothing to add, except that this is the answer I would give if asked.
Post #5 answers the question as asked. The question underneath it is different.
I changed my mind about pharmacy supply after someone here asked me for the source and I could not produce one. That is worth saying out loud because it is the ordinary way it happens.
I read post #4 twice before replying, because I had assumed the opposite.
Compounding pharmacies: UK allows compounding under specific conditions when a licensed product is unavailable. That is not a front-line option but becomes relevant during shortages.
I would not lead a decision with this, but I would not ignore it either.
Pharmacy practice varies between pharmacies and is not deducible from the regulatory position. Two people can honestly report opposite experiences.
A definition problem is doing most of the work in this pharmacy supply discussion. Once the term is pinned down I suspect the disagreement mostly goes away and what is left is small.
I would be cautious about generalising from the pharmacy supply example above. It is a good example. It is one example.
No disagreement from me. Posting only so the question does not look ignored.
Narrowing post #11, because the general version has more than one answer.
Importing for personal use: importing a prescription-only medicine without a prescription is not lawful. Material sold as research-use-only is not a licensed medicine regardless of content.
The number people quote for pharmacy supply is a central estimate presented without its interval, and the interval is wide enough that the estimate is nearly uninformative on its own.
Where guidance distinguishes between indications, quoting the indication is essential. The same compound has different positions under different indications.
The right answer here may simply be that it has not been measured.
The arithmetic in post #15 is right; the assumption feeding it is the part to check.
What I would check first on pharmacy supply is whether the thing being measured moved or whether the way of measuring it moved. Those look identical in a graph.
I had written a reply contradicting post #15 and deleted it. Here is what survived.
The claim about pharmacy supply upthread is stronger than its source supports. I have read the source. The source says "associated with" and the post says "causes".
Where a member reports a decision, the useful detail is the stated reason rather than the outcome, because the reason is what generalises.
Adding the measurement that post #20 says would settle it.
One more thing on pharmacy supply that took me far too long to see: the two figures people quote are not measuring the same quantity. Once you notice that, the apparent contradiction disappears.
Post #18 describes the usual case. This is about the unusual one.
Shortage positions have moved several times and any statement about supply here should carry a date on the face of it.
I would call the community position on pharmacy supply likely rather than established, and I would be comfortable defending that hedge.
Occupational health screening: some UK occupations require medical checks. Disclosure of weight-loss medication might be relevant to employment screening; understand your obligations.
Scoping that to what I have actually seen rather than what I have read.
Private prescribing is legal and widespread, including through remote consultation. Pharmacies must satisfy themselves that a prescription is clinically appropriate. Expect to be asked for measurements and history.
Second-hand, so weight it accordingly.
Post #26 put the caveat in the right place and I want to underline it.
Clinical guidance published for prescribers is public and answers most eligibility questions here more precisely than the discussion does.
The version of pharmacy supply that circulates here is a simplification of a simplification. It is not wrong, but it has lost the conditions under which it holds, and those conditions are where the interesting cases live.