Boots selling trans drugs despite NHS fears over harm to children
Pharmacy chain says it dispenses with ‘extreme caution’ and only to those with legally valid prescriptions
Boots is allowing the sale of trans drugs to under-18s despite the NHS warning about their effects on children.
Britain’s biggest high-street chemist is among a handful of pharmacy chains filling out private prescriptions for oestrogen and testosterone for 16 and 17-year-olds.
These cross-sex hormones, which transgender people take to change their physical appearance, are classed as controlled drugs and can cause permanent infertility.
Last month, the health service halted new NHS prescriptions of the medications for under-18s, citing “limited evidence about safety, risks, benefits and outcomes”.
GPs were also told that they “should refuse” to work with private, unregulated gender clinics issuing prescriptions to 16 and 17-year-olds.
The most popular gender clinics for under-18s are based overseas and outside UK regulation. The NHS said these clinics “pose a risk to patient safety as they are not subject to the same level of scrutiny as registered services”.
NHS bosses cautioned family doctors against collaborating with two clinics, GenderGP and Anne Healthcare, which oppose the Government’s 2024 puberty blocker ban.
However, The Telegraph has learned that under-18s turned away by their GP can still obtain cross-sex hormones via private prescriptions dispensed on the high street.
Boots, which operates more than 1,700 in-store pharmacies, and Rowlands Pharmacy, which has 331 branches, told The Telegraph that they continued to supply the drugs.
Boots said its pharmacists provided “compassionate, inclusive and person-centred care” to individuals with “legally valid” prescriptions for cross-sex hormones.
Rowlands said it had “always” dispensed the prescriptions “with extreme caution and sensitivity” and had procedures in place “to support pharmacists when handling prescriptions issued in EU and EEA countries”.
Some concerned parents told The Telegraph that they were “enraged” by Boots, as one of Britain’s most trusted brands, supplying the medications.
Boots ‘facilitating sterilisation’
One mother, who asked not to be named to protect her child, said her 17-year-old daughter had first obtained testosterone from Boots at 15 and had continued filling private prescriptions there until last summer. The script was issued by Gender GP.
She said: “As if my daughter pumping wrong-sex hormones prescribed by a disgraced, online, unregulated provider into her perfect, beautiful body wasn’t bad enough, I then discovered that her prescriptions had been dispensed by a branch of Boots the chemist in our home town. This revelation quite possibly enraged me more than the prescriptions themselves.”
The mother said that while she believed “[n]obody with any common sense thinks that GenderGP is a reputable company”, she expected more of the high street stalwart where she used to buy her daughter’s “nappies, baby food and cute Mini Mode outfits”.
“Our beloved, national treasure is facilitating the sterilisation and harm of my vulnerable, same-sex attracted, confused daughter and turning her into a lifelong medical patient. She may well be irreversibly harmed by these hormones and will almost certainly never be able to have children of her own,” she said.
It is understood that Boots cannot comment on individual cases.
Dr Louise Irvine, a GP on the gender-critical Clinical Advisory Network on Sex and Gender, said pharmacies such as Boots could still dispense the drugs because the law had “not caught up” with the updated NHS stance. She said ministers had not “extended the ban to private providers [as it did with puberty blockers] but will almost certainly do so.”
In the meantime, it remains both legal and compliant with guidance from the General Pharmaceutical Council (GPhC), which regulates the industry, for pharmacists to supply these drugs to 16 and 17-year-olds with a valid private prescription.
Other chains have imposed blanket bans
However, The Telegraph can reveal that three major supermarket pharmacy chains – Tesco, Asda and Morrisons, which operate 680 pharmacies between them – have imposed blanket bans on dispensing cross-sex hormones to under-18s, reflecting uncertainty in the sector about how such prescriptions should be handled.
Industry sources said pharmacies might have proactively decided this in response to the changing NHS rhetoric, and also because some felt that it was impossible for pharmacists to carry out all the checks on these prescriptions that the regulator requires.
When dispensing cross-sex hormones to 16 and 17-year-olds, the GPhC says pharmacists must consider “whether a prescription is clinically appropriate”, take a “holistic view” of the patient, obtain informed consent, assess safeguarding concerns and ideally secure GP contact details.
They must also ensure that the prescriber has sufficient expertise to assess, diagnose and treat gender dysphoria, while pharmacies are expected to verify that overseas clinics comply with “relevant UK regulatory and professional guidance”.
Some clinicians feel pharmacists are between a rock and a hard place, as their regulator also tells them to weigh “any risks that might be associated with declining to make a supply or abruptly discontinuing to make a supply”.
Neither Boots nor Rowlands Pharmacy would say whether they fill prescriptions from Gender GP or Anne Healthcare, the two companies singled out for criticism by the NHS. It is understood that Tesco, Morrisons and Asda would not fill scripts from these clinics as they do not supply cross-sex hormones to under-18s.
Superdrug’s position is less clear. A spokesman said it followed the law and current regulatory requirements but did not clarify its stance on supplying cross-sex hormones to under-18s.
The GPhC is monitoring the situation and keeping its guidance “under review”.
Anne Healthcare said it “facilitates access to gender-affirming care, connecting patients with qualified, experienced clinicians who follow WPATH [World Professional Association for Transgender Health] international best practice guidelines and robust safeguarding processes”.
A spokesman for Boots added that its pharmacists “consider the full context of the patient’s circumstances when deciding whether it is clinically appropriate to dispense the prescription, in accordance with the guidelines from the General Pharmaceutical Council”.
Rowlands Pharmacy added that its pharmacists are encouraged “to discuss prescriptions of this nature with the patient to assure themselves that the medicines have been prescribed appropriately and will be taken correctly” and for “pharmacists and pharmacy teams to seek advice and guidance as appropriate”.
Gender GP was contacted for comment.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2026/04/04/boots-selling-trans-drugs-harm-to-children-fears-nhs/
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