FEDERAL PANEL BACKS FEWER RESTRICTIONS ON PRESCRIBING

SOCIAL ISSUES: The conclusion is that more people could be helped if
doctors had leeway.

BETHESDA, Md.Herion addiction is a medical problem that can be cured if
doctors are freed from heavyhanded restrictions on the use of methadone, a
federal scientific panel concluded Wednesday.

The report by a committee at the National Institutes of Health supports an
earlier White House call for more physician control of dosing and
distribution of methadone, a synthetic narcotic used to wean addicts from
heroin.

Committee chairman Dr. Lewis L. Judd of the University of California, San
Diego, said physicians are reluctant to treat heroin addiction because of
mountains of paperwork and "onerous" regulations imposed on the use of
methadone by federal agencies and state governments.

"We know of no other area of medicine where the federal government intrudes
so deeply and coercively into the practice of medicine," Judd said. "If
extra levels of regulation were eliminated, many more physicians and
pharmacies could prescribe and dispense methadone" and make the treatment
more readily available.

Methadone is a pill that has some of the same physiological effects on the
brain as heroin and helps blunt the effects of withdrawal. Methadone does
not produce a "high" that most addicts crave, and it takes several hours
for its biological effects to occur. For these reasons, Judd said,
methadone is not considered a drug that is attractive to abusers and should
be available for prescription.

"Laws to control methadone diversion are no longer necessary," Judd said.
The laws were passed, he said, to limit distribution of methadone because
of apprehension it could be sold on the black market to heroin addicts.

The report, drafted by 12 independent experts commissioned by the NIH, is
consistent with a proposal made in September by Barry McCaffrey, director
of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy.

Dosing of methadone is controlled by the Food and Drug Administration.
Distribution of the heroin substitute also comes under regulations of the
Drug Enforcement Administration and the Department of Health and Human
Services. Additionally, almost every state has laws that closely control
how, when and where methadone is to be used.