Doctors Blamed For Drug Problem Role

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 32219, 11 February 1970, Page 13

Doctors Blamed For Drug Problem Role

<N Z Press Assn.—Copyright) j MELBOURNE, Feb. 10. I ! The medical profession ; was contributing significantly to the drug problem in Australia, Dr J. N. Santamaria, senior physician to the alcoholism clinic at St Vincent’s Hospital. Melbourne, said in Melbourne. Dr Santamaria said yesterday that most of the patients addicted to barbiturates and tranquillisers were obtaining; the drugs on legitimate prescriptions. He was addressing the first day of the Melbourne session of the twenty-ninth International Congress on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence at Mel- ; bourne University. , “It is the doctors who must r reverse this process,” he said. , “We must avoid the repeti- . tive prescription of these s I drugs, especially on the patient's request. ■ ; -I “We must be alert to detect sjthe person who may ‘shop ;; around’ or who is simultane-i : ously under treatment as an 11 out-patient of a public instii■ tution.” I Dr Santamaria advocated;

;much more stringent controls on the use of proprietary drugs not requiring a prescription, such as the bromides and non-narcotic analgesics.

“The evidence points sharply to the fact that the extent of a particular drug dependence is related to its cost and free availability,” he “Many of these drugs have a limited scope in thera- : peutics.

“Not only should these agents require a prescription before being dispensed but the medical practitioner should use alternative safer and superior preparations in the management of anxiety, depression and pain;”

Communists Gaoled A Madrid court has imprisoned Encarnacion Formenti,! a woman Communist leader, { for 16 years, and has also; sent 13 of her associates to I prison for running a Com-! munist cell in Madrid and the province of Avila. —Madrid,; February 10. >