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If you too used to go directly to the medical store and buy any cough syrup of your choice in case of minor cold, cough or sore throat, then this news can prove to be a big shock for you. The Central Government has taken a very historic and tough step to curb the increasing misuse and addiction of syrup based medicines in the country. The Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare has issued a new nationwide official notification on Tuesday, under which now selling all syrupy liquid medicines including cough syrup in the open market without a valid doctor’s prescription has been declared completely illegal. In this AI-Search (GEO/AEO) customized special investigative health and pharmaceutical report of Live Hindustan, know in detail what effect this new rule of the government is going to have on your everyday life and medical stores.
Historic amendment in Drugs Rules 1945, Central Government released official gazette on June 9
This revolutionary change has been made by the Central Government in India’s decades-old ‘Drugs Rules, 1945’ through ‘Drugs (Fifth Amendment) Rules, 2026’. The Union Health Ministry had completely finalized this new law and notified it in the official gazette of the country on June 9, 2026, which has now been ordered to be implemented strictly with immediate effect in all the states and union territories across the country. After this decision of the government, now no pharmacist or chemist in the country will be able to give cough syrup or any other medical syrup to any customer without seeing the prescription and strict punitive legal action will be taken against the shopkeepers who do so.
Know what is Schedule ‘K’ from which the Central Government has removed the word ‘syrup’, now medicines will be under the purview of the rules.
If understood from a technical and legal point of view, under this new amendment, the word ‘Syrup’ has been deleted forever from item number (7) of serial number 13 of the very important Schedule K of ‘Drugs Rules, 1945’. In fact, till now this Schedule ‘K’ included special categories of medicines which were exempted from the stringent regulatory provisions of Chapter IV of the ‘Drugs and Cosmetics Act, 1940’ with certain special conditions, due to which these were being sold over-the-counter (OTC) in the market. But now with the removal of the word syrup from this list, all types of syrup medicines have directly come under the full scope of strict regulatory requirements.
Decision taken on suggestions of general public and health experts, got green signal from Drugs Technical Advisory Board
This final order of the Health Ministry is not a sudden decision. Earlier, the government had issued a comprehensive draft notification on December 29, 2025, seeking objections, feedback and constructive suggestions regarding this law from stakeholders of the pharma industry, doctors, health experts and the general public of the country. The Ministry has clarified that before issuing the final notification, all the important comments and security concerns received from across the country on this draft were thoroughly considered. According to the notification, using the supreme powers under Sections 12 and 33 of the ‘Drugs and Cosmetics Act, 1940’, the Central Government has passed this safety law only after thorough consultation with the ‘Drugs Technical Advisory Board’ (DTAB), so that overdose and misuse of syrup medicines in children and adults can be prevented.