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Since he retired as a pharmacist in 1993, Gerald Murphy has been on a crusade that could mean consumers would keep more money in their pockets.

Take a look at your medications. Do they have a "discard after" date or expiration date?

Murphy, of Ormond Beach, has beefs with both instructions, but conquering the "discard after" wording is his mission at the moment with state pharmacy leaders.

Fourteen months ago, the state Board of Pharmacy repealed a provision that pharmacists put a "discard after" date on prescriptions, but the message is not getting out to pharmacists, Murphy said. The repeal came after a state administrative oversight committee said the pharmacy board is not authorized to require pharmacists to include the warning.

"By and large, pharmacists have been kept ignorant," Murphy, 77, said. "I have been raising hell about this issue."

Use of the "discard after" warning is telling consumers to toss out medications that he says may be grounded in questionable expiration dates given by the manufacturers. Now pharmacists in Florida are supposed to be using expiration dates.

The pharmacy board did publish in a state government publication its repeal of the "discard after" warning but has done little beyond that to get the word out to Florida's approximately 22,000 pharmacists, he said.

Likewise, Murphy says, the professional association for pharmacists, the Florida Pharmacy Association, has been lax in conveying the rule change to its 4,000 members, he said.

Michael Jackson, executive director of the association, said his group informed its members to remove the "discard after" wording and to go back to using expiration dates.

Jackson said his members are fairly knowledgeable about the repeal of the wording but others may not. There also is an expense to getting computer software rewritten to no longer automatically include the wording.

To Murphy, that's a poor excuse.

He owned a pharmacy in Daytona Beach before retiring and didn't face hitches getting computer software changed when laws were amended.

Jackson said he understands Murphy's position on the matter. Still, his professional association represents just 4,000 of the state's 21,000 or more licensed pharmacists. And he says the state pharmacy board no longer has its own newsletter, because of budget cuts, so it relies on its Internet site to get information out to pharmacists.

"Yes, he does have a legitimate concern," Jackson said. "Unfortunately, there are much greater issues out there."

By that he means Medicare Part D, the federal government's prescription drug plan for seniors that has been causing havoc for pharmacists and their customers since it kicked in Jan. 1.

"Medicare Part D is a major issue and that has eaten up all of our time," he said. "While the 'discard after' is important, getting Medicare Part D to work is more important."

Jackson said Murphy is "focused on a real consumer issue" but it essentially needs to be addressed at the federal level for more accuracy in expiration dates.

Many medicines, if stored properly, may last longer than the expiration date, Jackson said.

At the same time, physicians customarily don't write prescriptions that go beyond a 90-day supply, so patients should run out of a prescription long before an expiration date kicks in.

"If not, then the patient may not be compliant with the doctor's orders," he said.

Tim Hayes, operations consultant and former owner of Harrington pharmacies in Collier and Lee counties, said he was not aware the "discard after" wording was dropped by the state pharmacy board and that expiration dates are to be used instead.

He agrees with Murphy, the crusader, that more studies need to be done that examine the validity of expiration dates and whether medications maintain potency longer than the manufacturers say.

"Most pharmacists believe that expiration dates on medicines are self-serving to the pharmaceutical industry, period. Who wins when you have to throw them out?" he said. "On the other hand, longer expiration dates encourage patients to self-medicate, and that's not a good thing."

Lobbyists for pharmacists have tried to raise the issue in the past but priorities have changed, he said.

Customers do ask if their medications are still good after the expiration date, Hayes said. Depending on the medicine and if it's been maintained in an air-conditioned room and other ideal conditions, he may tell them they can hang on to it for three or four months longer.

George Bartz, former president of the Collier Pharmacy Association, doesn't agree with Murphy's cause.

"It is important that people don't stockpile (medications)," he said. "We don't want noncompliant patients."

He doesn't buy the argument that pharmaceutical companies are simply out to make larger profits by expiration dates. Requiring them to do more studies to see if their products or drugs can have longer expiration dates would be costly and that expense would get passed on to the consumer, he said.

"I think the drug companies are doing a great job," Bartz said.

In 2001, Murphy asked then-Sen. Bob Graham of Florida to look into the validity of expiration dates provided by drug manufacturers.

In a letter to Graham, the FDA acknowledged expiration dates are based on what the manufacturers have submitted in pre-market approvals and are considered tentative. The drug companies may seek extensions of expiration dates as long as they submit testing data backing it up.

"The expiration date may be extended as many times as requested by the sponsor as long as adequate data, as described below, are provided," the letter said to Graham. "The (FDA) does not have any data on the clinical or fiscal impact of expiration dates at this time nor do we have the resources to conduct studies to obtain such information."

Murphy says drug manufacturers tend to put a two-year expiration date on their products.

"What is a true point of expiration?" he said. "Nobody knows."

The American Medical Association likewise said in a 2001 report that "there essentially are no reliable data on the clinical or fiscal impact of pharmaceutical expiration dates in the civilian market."

The AMA referred to the civilian market because of a report in the Wall Street Journal a year earlier about the FDA in 1985 testing some stockpiled medications belonging to the U.S. military that was about to expire. The FDA found many of 100 different prescription and over-the-counter medications were still good beyond their expiration dates, according to the report.

The AMA's position is that it supports expiration dates on prescription drugs determined by the manufacturers. Still, the AMA has urged the FDA and the pharmaceutical industry to determine collaboratively whether extending expiration dates would be beneficial, clinically or economically, to consumers.