THE PRESS SATURDAY, JANUARY 11, 1986. Restricting drug purchases

Press, 11 January 1986, Page 16

THE PRESS SATURDAY, JANUARY 11, 1986. Restricting drug purchases

Drug addicts — and the criminal parasites who cater to their self-destruction — have shown ingenuity in overcoming the shortage of hard drugs on the streets. The dangerous substance known as homebake is being manufactured in makeshift laboratories from codeine-based pain-killers that are readily available without prescription. The backroom industry is a result of efficient policing of illegal drug importation and also a sign of the lengths to which addicts and their suppliers will go. Large amounts of proprietary medication are required to yield a relatively small amount of heroin or morphine. This means bulk buying of preparations in quantities far beyond the requirements of the average household, office, or factory first-aid cabinet.

Because some pharmacies have been prepared to supply these large quantities, apparently with no questions asked and in direct defiance of strong warnings from the Chemists’ Guild and the Pharmaceutical Society, the Health Department will consider restricting sales of codeine-based products to prescriptions. Such an extreme step would be an over-reaction, causing added costs and inconvenience to genuine users out of all proportion to the number of abusers or the

consideration they deserve. It would be quite silly to hamper needlessly legitimate buyers of a headache remedy in a futile effort to preserve people who have shown such dedication in the pursuit of their physical and mental annihilation. Just as, the addicts turned to homebake as a substitute when law enforcement limited importation of illicit hard drugs, they will find another substitute if law enforcement limits the production of homebake. All that will have been achieved in the long run will be the raising of pointless and costly obstacles to buying simple medications by lawabiding citizens. If it can be established that some chemists are handing out codeine-based products indiscriminately, the proper response is to allow the Pharmaceutical Society to make good its threat to strike the offending chemists off the society’s register. Quite obviously the great majority of chemists are behaving responsibly and it is only an irresponsible few that are making it easy for the homebake manufacturers. By doing so, they are not breaking any law, only their society’s own rules and the ethical code of their profession. Control of these few by their own profession is much to be preferred to another lot of restrictions on people who do not abuse drugs.