IT will be surprising to most people who have bought paracetamol painkillers over the counter that a 12-year-old boy was able to purchase a box from a local shop.

Most retailers, especially pharmacies, are quite strict in who they sell the product to, and will usually not allow anyone to buy too much of the drug in one go.

What is possibly even more curious, though, is that paracetamol isn’t actually a product that is restricted from being sold to anyone who is not an adult.

Paracetamol, while being of obvious benefit to anyone who needs short-term relief for mild pain, can of course have devastating effects on anyone who takes too much of it – either unwittingly or deliberately.

It seems that it is purely down to the retailer whether they enforce their own policy of restricting its sale in terms of quantity or the age of the purchaser.

It is more than likely that in the case of young Lewis, the boy who bought the paracetamol from a local shop, the shopkeeper thought he or she was doing the boy a favour.

However, it could easily have had more serious consequences, had the 12-year-old taken too many of the tablets.

For the sake of clarity, there should perhaps be a fresh look at the regulations surrounding the sale of over-the-counter medicines so that children cannot obtain such products in any circumstances.

A clear set of guidelines would remove any doubt among shopkeepers whether they should sell the tablets or not, in instances where no company-wide policy is in place, as it tends to be in the larger chains.