PAIN TREATMENT AND DRUG ABUSE, APPARENTLY UNCONNECTED

The use of narcotics for medicinal pain relief is on the increase but
generally has not resulted in a higher level of abuse.

Researchers at the University of Wisconsin Medical School studied records
from the Drug Enforcement Administration and the Drug Abuse Warning
Network, which is conducting a study of drug abuse for the federal
Department of Health and Human Services. The study determined that although
amounts of opiates, or narcotics used to kill pain, prescribed are
increasing greatly, this does not appear to be linked to a rise in abuse.

From 1990 to 1996 there were increases in the legal use of fentanyl (1,092
percent - an extremely large increase because it is now available in an
easily administered patch form), morphine (49 percent), oxycodone (15
percent) and hydromorphone (12 percent) -- and a decrease in meperidine (39
percent).

During the same period, total reports of drug abuse dropped from 5.1
percent to 3.8 percent. Decreases were found in abuse of fentanyl (59
percent), oxycodone (29 percent) and hydromorphone (15 percent), while the
only drug for which an increase in abuse was found was morphine (up 3
percent).

GRAPHIC: Chart Medical use of opiates measured in hundreds of grams used
per 100,000 people. Rates of drug abuse shown in percent change from 1990
to 1996:

FENTANYL: -59.3%

MORPHINE: up 3.22%

OXYCODONE: -29.5%

HYDROMORPHONE: -15.2%

MEPERIDINE: -39.6%

(Source - Drug Abuse Warning Network, Automation of Reports and
Consolidated Orders System, The Journal of the American Medical Association)