In 1998 the Government decreed that the sale of painkillers should be limited to packs of 16 in all shops except pharmacies which may sell packs of 32. The reason? To minimise the risk of overdosing.

This difference is presumably because pharmacists are somehow more qualified to spot a would-be suicide than the average less clued up check-out assistant in a supermarket and nothing to do with securing a monopoly on larger pack sales for pharmacists.

It is clearly desirable to make it tricky for those hell bent on killing themselves to amass sufficient pills to guarantee success, and this has prompted this particular assault on our freedom.

It does of course presuppose that every would-be suicide is by definition incapable of touring their local supermarkets and chemists to achieve their objective; or indeed of using several different tills at the same supermarket in the certain knowledge that no one will notice. And, I haven’t tried I must admit, but I wonder whether those self-check-out machines in supermarkets would flag up a multiple purchase of painkillers and set off alarms?

Those who make these decisions for us claim that, since the legislation, suicide by non-prescription painkiller consumption has decreased; but ‘since’ does not necessarily mean ‘because of’. It could be as a result of any number of other causes, as well or instead, and a link between the ease of purchase of painkillers and deaths by overdose is very difficult to prove.

The other effect of this nanny state decree is that given that packaging is a surprisingly large part of the cost of products like these, the economies of scale that would be possible by buying a plastic container with 100 tablets in it are no longer available to those of us who wish to stock a medicine cupboard in a non-self-destructive home. I travel to America several times a year and have learned to take the opportunity to bring back containers of 500 of their branded equivalents of our painkillers now and then.

They are considerably cheaper.

Americans it seems have ready access to a whole array of firearms with less regulation or scrutiny by their government than we have for acquiring paracetamol, so why would the life threatening potential of painkillers worry them?

I’m sure that the UK drug industry is delighted with the current restrictions. They can charge over twice as much as they do in America.