A health ministry advisory panel plans to urge the government to place sharp limits on the scope of nonprescription drugs to be sold by convenience stores and other retailers that do not employ pharmacists, including cold and allergy medicines.

Under the proposal, such retailers would remain barred from selling most cold medicines, antipyretics and allergy drugs now available at pharmacies. The restriction was proposed at a meeting of a panel of experts at the Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry, sources said.

They said the panel is concerned that removing the ban on the sale of most nonprescription drugs at retailers without pharmacists would increase the number of cases in which consumers suffer side effects.

The latest proposal would limit the range of drugs that retailers without pharmacists could sell to a mere fraction of the 13,000 OTC drugs already being sold in drugstores. The panel believes the sale of these drugs should remain the exclusive domain of pharmacists.

The government's top advisory panel on deregulation, the Council for Regulatory Reform, headed by Orix Corp. Chairman Yoshihiko Miyauchi, is expected to criticize the proposed limits.

The council has been demanding that the government authorize sales of cold medicines and antipyretics at such retailers. Council members have been urging the government to authorize the sale of nonprescription drugs, including at retailers without pharmacists.

The ministry panel's stand is expected to trigger heated debate.

The panel has decided retailers should remain barred from selling all drugs that could cause shock, kidney trouble and the Stevens Johnson syndrome, which causes inflammation of the mucous membranes and skin, from the list of OTC drugs whose sales will be authorized at retailers without pharmacists.

The panel will also recommend that medicines that could have dangerous effects on pregnant women and infants, and strong drugs that could affect the whole body, be kept off retailers' shelves.