RX: COMMON SENSE

THE POINT -- Study shows how drug policy often impedes medical care.

Fallout from our panic-driven war on drugs includes the demonization
of medications that has reached irrational levels. Abuse by some has
made many drugs unavailable to people who really need them, or driven
some to live with their medical condition rather than endure the
trouble of getting treatment.

Virtually all drugs, including those that now are illegal, originally
were developed to help people. Heroin is a powerful painkiller;
medications for pneumonia and other illnesses once contained cocaine.
Even the active ingredient in marijuana is known to provide relief for
glaucoma, the side effects of cancer treatments and other maladies.

Sadly, the overreactions of politicians -- most of whom have no special
knowledge of medicine -- has led to policies that has made many lives
worse, or prevented them from getting better. Many a student has had
to give up participation in school sports because the medications they
take for conditions such as asthma contain substances that governing
boards have banned. People have gone without treatment because they
couldn't afford the doctor's visit that was needed to get a
prescription.

It's common for some Texans to bypass these impositions by crossing
into Mexico, where they can buy over the counter many drugs that
require prescriptions in the United States. Some regions in Texas lure
Winter Texans, retirees who spend cold months here. Many of them have
chronic conditions, like high blood pressure, and already know what
helps them. They see little need to spend the time and money to see a
doctor for a new prescription every time they need a new supply of
drugs. Many parents whose toddlers had frequent ear infections have
gotten antibiotics in Mexico, where they were cheaper and more
accessible, although the Mexican government has started imposing its
own restrictions on those kinds of medications.

A new study shows how Texans react to the restrictions here, and
options south of the border. Joseph Potter, a sociology and population
research professor at the University of Texas at Austin, found that
women who went to family planning clinics in El Paso for
contraceptives were 60 percent more likely to stop taking them within
nine months than women who bought them over the counter in Ciudad
Juarez. The Border Contraceptive Access Study, funded by the Eunice
Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human
Development, also found that women who received small supplies of the
pills were about 80 percent more likely to stop using them than those
who could buy as many as they wanted.

Doctors frequently lament that they lose patients because they don't
buy medicines or miss or reduce dosages because they can't afford to
fill the prescriptions. The corollary should be obvious: More people
would be able to afford medications if they didn't first have to pay
for the doctor's visit every time they had to refill the order.

There's no telling how many people have died or endured worse health
because they couldn't refill a prescription.

Certainly, self-prescribing medication carries risks. Ideally, a
person would see a doctor for the initial diagnosis and prescription
or recommendation, and see the doctor again if problems arose or the
treatment didn't work. Otherwise they should be free to buy the
medications on their own, as long as they were effective and no
complications arose.

This study supports what many people have long recognized --
unnecessary restrictions on medications can do more harm than any good
those restrictions might offer.