Jeff pointed us to:

A few extracts from
http://www.pharmj.com/Editorial/20040424/society/statcomm.html#2

where I also found:
"In the final instance, a patient with a prescription for three days’
supply of methadone, requiring to be dispensed on 21 October, arrived at
the pharmacy too late to collect it and returned the following morning.
Mr xxxx dispensed the full three days’ supply, entering it in the
register as having been dispensed on 21 October. He explained that he
had done this because it had been made up on 21 October, which was true.
What he should have done, said the chairman, was refuse to dispense at
all for the three days and send the patient back to his doctor to secure
a new prescription."

No no no.

Have these bureaucrats in the Pharmaceurical Society's Statutory
Committee any idea of the Kafka-esque hassle their zealous
interpretation of the discredited MDA rules, freely mixed in with other
"Good Practice Guidance" which has no force of law at all, and a
bludgeon of mis-interpretation from officious ex-traffic-cop local
constabulary - does to the morale of front-line workers trying to
prescibe and dispense methadone? 

The chairman's view would result in a much longer interruption to a
regime where stability is of the essence, and a wholly unnecessary
encounter with the practice.  The users's lateness does not require
further punishment of him, nor any of the doctors.

Prescriptions have a start date, but no end date, I believe.  


Colin Brown