Lab. Code, § 4600.1 · Article 2. Medical and Hospital Treatment
Lab. Code, § 4600.1
Text — As published in the Legislative Counsel's database, tables dated October 18, 2026 (pubinfo_2025.zip)
(a) Subject to subdivision (b), any person or entity that dispenses medicines and medical supplies, as required by Section 4600, shall dispense the generic drug equivalent.
(b) A person or entity is not required to dispense a generic drug equivalent under either of the following circumstances:
(1) When a generic drug equivalent is unavailable.
(2) When the prescribing physician specifically provides in writing that a nongeneric drug must be dispensed.
(c) For purposes of this section, “dispense” has the same meaning as the definition contained in Section 4024 of the Business and Professions Code.
(d) Nothing in this section shall be construed to preclude a prescribing physician, who is also the dispensing physician, from dispensing a generic drug equivalent.
(e) This section shall only apply to medicines dispensed prior to the operative date of the drug formulary adopted pursuant to Section 5307.27.
Notes and commentary — not statutory text
History
Amended by Stats. 2015, Ch. 525, Sec. 2. (AB 1124) Effective January 1, 2016.
Source of truth
- Edition
- As published in the Legislative Counsel's database, tables dated October 18, 2026 (pubinfo_2025.zip)
- Official file
- https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySection.xhtml?lawCode=LAB§ionNum=4600.1.
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- sha256 5cfc3717034a805a54c558672469c288c4f7e73fc0a3a442e6f63b440189383d
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- compose_ca.py 2026-10-22: the Legislative Counsel's CAML content files read by a tokenizer (caml_readers.reader_a); an independent xml.etree reading (caml_readers.reader_b) agrees on every section
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