DATE-RAPE DRUG CLEARED FOR NARCOLEPSY USE

WASHINGTON - A version of the date-rape drug GHB significantly helps a
dangerous complication of the sleep disorder narcolepsy, the government
ruled in deciding that certain patients now can buy it.

But the Food and Drug Administration's approval of the version named Xyrem
late Wednesday came with some of the most severe restrictions ever imposed
on a medicine. The agency's move, nevertheless, carves out a single medical
use for an otherwise illegal chemical.

Throughout the 1990s, the government had cracked down on illegal GHB use -
abused as a party drug, sex and athletic enhancer and, because it can knock
people out, a date-rape drug. Several dozen deaths are blamed on the
chemical. But GHB was hard to stop because it was easy for people to mix up
with some common chemicals.

Now the maker of the FDA-approved version, Orphan Medical Inc., will have
to balance how to get GHB to patients while at the same time not letting it
fall into the wrong hands.