GPS HAVE GOT BRITAIN 'HOOKED ON PAINKILLERS'

. Inquiry slams mis-prescribing of drugs

. Doctors 'ignoring official guidelines'

Doctors are unwittingly fuelling the growing number of Britons hooked
on prescription drugs by giving patients dangerously high doses of
medicines that can prove highly addictive, a parliamentary inquiry has
concluded. MPs say that 'mis-prescribing' of drugs such as
painkillers, sleeping tablets and anti-anxiety pills by some doctors
is 'leading to addiction and dependence'.

GPs ignore official advice that patients should take powerful
benzodiazepine tranquillisers for no more than four weeks by handing
out repeat prescriptions without even seeing them in their surgery,
says an all-party parliamentary group on drug misuse. The Home Office
blames the mis-use benzodiazepines for causing 17,000 deaths since
their introduction in the Sixties.

'It was extremely concerning for the inquiry to receive so many
testimonials of people still being negligently prescribed these drugs
by their GP,' say the MPs. 'The guidelines now in place recommend that
benzodiazepines are not taken continuously for longer than four weeks,
but there were many cases of GPs continuing to prescribe the drug for
a lot longer - sometimes even allowing repeat prescriptions without
having the patient in for a consultation.'

News of the inquiry's report follows last week's revelation that
28-year-old Hollywood actor Heath Ledger died as the result of 'acute
intoxication' caused by an accidental overdose of anti-anxiety
medication and prescription painkillers. Health experts are warning
that prescription drug abuse is now widespread on both sides of the
Atlantic.

Dr Brian Iddon, the Labour MP and former chemist who chairs the group, told
The
Observer: 'Some GPs are addicting people by giving them repeat prescriptions
without
checking to see how long they've been on the drugs in the first place. They
are not
stopping patients from getting any more of them after the set amount of
time.'

The MPs' investigation into prescription and over-the-counter drugs
also claims that family doctors are contributing to growing problems
associated with these substances by not taking seriously enough
requests for help from addicts, and by mismanaging patients with
chronic pain.

Dr Steve Field, chairman of the Royal College of General
Practitioners, said it would take on board the MPs' findings, which
raised some important concerns about how family doctors treat patients
who may be abusing either prescription or shop-bought drugs, or both.

Some GPs needed to improve their repeat prescription systems so that
the amount of drugs that patients were taking could be monitored and
that fresh supplies would only be approved if they were medically
necessary, he admitted.

Patients who are addicted to prescription drugs could be 'extremely
manipulative' in their efforts to get GPs to prescribe them more
drugs. Identifying how much pain someone was actually suffering could
be very difficult, Field said.

Medical experts told the inquiry that an unknown, but growing, number
of people had become addicted to painkillers, often after taking them
initially for a genuine medical complaint such as a sore back, period
pains or bad headaches. Some developed a dependence on
over-the-counter drugs as a result.

Solpadeine and Nurofen Plus are the two most widely misused such
substances, the MPs say, with 4,000 subscribers to one specialist
advice website alone hooked on Solpadeine.

A coroner in Lancashire recently called for Nurofen Plus to be
reclassified after investigating the case of Linda Docherty, who died
after taking up to 64 Nurofen Plus tablets a day, which she had
obtained by visiting different supermarkets and chemists to evade the
limit on customers buying only one packet of 24 at a time.

'Although the reclassification of some substances from
prescription-only to over-the-counter has resulted in often
significant cost savings for consumers, the abuse or misuse of these
substances can result in serious side-effects, such as dependency,
addiction, hospitalisation and potentially even death,' the MPs conclude.

The Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency, which
oversees drug safety, said the deaths of 1,135 people were suspected
of having been caused by an adverse reaction to legal drugs in the
last 13 months, including 25 who overdosed.

Health experts say the rise in prescription dependence has been
worsened by the ease with which drugs can be bought on the internet.

Thousands of online pharmacies now provide potentially lethal drugs to
anyone logging in and giving a credit-card number. An 'online
consultation' merely asks the customer how old he or she is and how
bad their pain is on a scale of one to 10.