A Close Look at Auxiliary Prescription Labels
The ubiquitous little stickers are classically inconspicuous.
I picked up a prescription refill at my local pharmacy the other day. When I opened the bottle later that night, I was surprised by the look of the pills, which were round, instead of the square-ish pills I was used to seeing for this medication. Had the pharmacy given me the wrong drug?
That’s when I noticed a little green sticker on the pill bottle. As you can see in the photo shown above, it reads, “This is the same medication you have been getting. Color, size or shape may appear different.” I felt reassured, and was also happy that my pharmacist had been thoughtful enough to anticipate my concern.
The sticker on my pill bottle is part of a larger family of brightly colored labels that we’ve all seen on our prescription medications. Usually they’re amplifying a doctor’s instructions (“Take with Food”) or warning of possible side effects (“May Cause Drowsiness”). I’d never devoted much thought to them before, but this latest one got me thinking: Who makes and sells these little stickers? How many different messages do they carry? Is someone credited with “inventing” them, or did they emerge sort of organically?
And that’s how I started down the rabbit hole of what the pharmacy industry calls auxiliary prescription labels. They’re standard inventory, usually in rolls of 500 or 1,000, at pharmacy- and medical-supply outlets like Apothecary Products, Distinctive Medical, and many others. But you don’t need to be a medical professional to purchase them — they’re also readily available on Amazon, and some of the more risqué ones are even sold as gag items on Etsy. There’s something vaguely pop-cultural about them, which presumably explains why they’ve shown up on T-shirts and notebook covers, and why there are also parody versions.
Auxiliary labels have a fairly consistent look: They usually measure an inch and a half wide by three-eighths of an inch high, come in a familiar ranges of reds, blues, yellows, oranges, and greens, and often include very simple illustrations. Although this fairly uniform formatting may provide a veneer of formal standardization, the reality is that the labels are not issued or approved by any industry group and are not subject to any state or federal regulation, so there is no “official” version of any auxiliary sticker. Depending on the vendor, the same basic message may appear with slightly different wording, on a different-colored background, or accompanied by a different (or no) illustration. Here, for example, are some of the options — but by no means all of them — for the common “May Cause Drowsiness” message:
