Pharmacists have reacted angrily to a call from Baroness Molly Meacher, chair of the all-party parliamentary group (APPG) for drug policy reform, for pharmacies to a sell legal highs, stressing that the role would sit uncomfortably in the healthcare profession.

Ms Meacher, a crossbencher in the House of Lords, suggested on BBC Radio Four's Today programme yesterday (January 15) that the safety of recreational drugs could be improved by selling them through pharmacies.

Ms Meacher argued that pharmacy should have a role in supervising the use of legal highs, which are not banned by the UK government, but can include natural substances such as salvia divinorum, psychoactive substances such as synthetic cannabis and hallucinogenic mushrooms.

"Pharmacies are quite revered by the public... they're not like one of those cafés you find in Amsterdam" Gurminder Sall, Jeeves Chemist, Buckinghamshire

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Supervised sales of the safer legal highs could improve awareness of their ingredients and the risks involved, she argued. "There are many legal highs that are substitutes for ecstasy and if those much safer drugs were provided, say, in a chemist – very carefully labelled – at least you'd know what was in it," Ms Meacher told the BBC. The comments came after the APPG published a report on drugs use in the UK, which named the emergence of legal highs over the past 15 years as "challenging the drug control system".

The report, published on Monday, recommended selling the drugs through licensed premises as a legitimate way of restricting use to minimise harms.

But pharmacists hit out at suggestions that they should supervise sales. The move would contradict the profession's focus on healthcare, said Graham Jones of Broadway Pharmacy, Berkshire.

"It sits uncomfortably with the direction in which I think pharmacy should be going, which is about becoming very much more associated with wellness and health and wellbeing," Mr Jones told C+D.

And Gurminder Sall, superintendent pharmacist at Jeeves Chemist, Buckinghamshire, said he wouldn't be happy to sell the drugs.

"Pharmacies are quite revered by the public and are seen as sacred places and places you go if you want to be healed," he told C+D. "They're not like one of those cafés you find in Amsterdam."

Use of legal highs is estimated to be a particular problem in the UK, with a pan-European survey finding just under 10 per cent of 16- to 19-year-olds in the UK had experimented with the drugs, compared to a European average of 5 per cent.