In Borchardt v. Department of Commerce (1996) 218 Mich. App. 367, a pharmacist personally acted "as a middleman" between two other pharmacists: He accepted payment from a fellow Michigan pharmacist for drugs paid for by an Illinois pharmacist. The Michigan state board of pharmacy disciplined him for "functioning as a wholesale distributor without a license to do so" and the pharmacist sought relief in the state courts on the theory that his own pharmacy license allowed him to act as a wholesaler. (See id. at p. 369.) The trial court set aside the discipline because it disagreed with the board's "finding that the pharmacist's actions fell within the statutory definition of a 'wholesale distributor.'" (Id. at pp. 370-371.) The appellate court reversed. The trial court had relied on a Kentucky case (Kennedy v. Kentucky Bd. of Pharmacy (Ky.App. 1990) 799 S.W.2d 58), but that case had involved a statute that "clearly stated that a pharmacist was exempt from the definition of a person acting as a wholesaler" (Borchardt, supra, 218 Mich. App. at p. 350), and Michigan's statutory definition of wholesaler did not exempt pharmacists from the definition of wholesaler. (For what it is worth, we note that California's statutory definition of pharmaceutical wholesaling also contains no such exemption.) But the Borchardt court's main point had to do with the essence of the "practice of pharmacy." The trial court had found that the pharmacist, "by virtue of his license to practice pharmacy, was allowed to act as a middleman between the two other pharmacists for the sale of drugs." (Borchardt, supra, 218 Mich. App. at p. 372, italics added.) Not so, said the appellate court. Pointing to a statutory definition of the practice of pharmacy similar to California's in that it defined the practice of pharmacy as a "health service," the Michigan court said: "Because the statutory definition of the practice of pharmacy does not include those actions defined in the statutory definition of wholesale distributor, we conclude that the circuit court's reasoning was in error. If the Legislature had intended the practice of pharmacy to include the action of a wholesale distributor, it would have provided for this in the statutory definition of 'practice of pharmacy.' Alternatively, the Legislature could have explicitly excluded pharmacists from the definition of wholesale distributor, as did the Kentucky legislature. However, where no such provision of distinction was made, we conclude that the Legislature did not intend for the actions of a wholesale distributor to be included in the practice of pharmacy." (Borchardt, supra, 218 Mich. App. at p. 372-373.)