DRUG ALARM.

Star (Christchurch), Volume LXVI, Issue 20274, 7 April 1934, Page 24 (Supplement)

DRUG ALARM.

Britain to Consider Some Form of Control. INCREASE IN DEATHS. JT IS UNDERSTOOD that the Home Office Poisons Board is to consider the alarming increase in deaths from barbiturate drugs'—now in general use as sedatives, says the “ Daily Express,” London. The sales of two forms of these drugs, dial and veronal, may be restricted. Thirteen people have died from overdoses of barbituric drugs in the last two months. When the Home Office last classified these drugs, fifteen years ago, the death-roll for a year was only six. There are now twenty-nine known varieties of barbiturate drugs. Home Office authorities are alarmed, though immediate official action is precluded by the controversy in the medical profession regarding the values and dangers of the drugs. The battle of the barbiturates is continued in the “ Lancet.” Sir William Willcox, the toxicologist and Home Office adviser, who attacked the drugs and their misuses, is assailed —and defended. Experts’ View. Home Office experts take opposite sides. Dr G. Roche Lynch, the analyst, says that twenty-two cases passed through his hands last year. Eight of the victims died. •• The Registrar-General's returns,” he states, "are, for obvious reasons, minimum numbers, and non-fatal cases are not mentioned. " Realising that the number of cases that have passed through my hands represent only a small proportion of the total number of cases occurring in London, one is forced to the conclusion that this type of poisoning is seriously on the inDr Arthur P. Luff, a Home Office toxicologist when barbiturate drugs were first introduced forty years ago, w-rites: “ The result of my forty years’ experience has convinced me that in the barbituric acid group we have hypnotics which, when suitably administered, are among the safest with which I am acquainted*. "By all means let self-dosage with these (.Vugs be guarded against by. having prescriptions marked that they are not to be repeated unless on the order of the doctor. “ I should also like to see their sale to members of the public stopped unless ordered in prescription.” Sir James Purves-Stewart records cases of severe nervous disorders which have followed prolonged use of the barbiturates. " The Registrar-General’s figures,” he asserts, “undoubtedly under-esti-mate the true condition of affairs. Some cases of suicide are camouflaged as accidental deaths. Other cases, where lethal crises of barbiturates have been taken, are rescued by appropriate energetic treatment. Care Necessary. “ Sir William Willcox tells us that during 1983 he treated eighteen cases.

T have treated six such cases in the last seven months. Only to-dav, two barbiturate suicides are reported. 44 I stoutly assert that the barbitun ates sometimes give rise to addiction. I know many cases where the patient has become unable to sleep without the drug. 44 The fact that the barbiturates are powerful and potentially dangerous drugs need not prevent us from prescribing them with due care in suitable cases. 44 But it ought not to be possible for a non-medical individual to walk into a druggist’s store, as at present, and to buv a bottle of barbiturate across the counter with no questions asked. 44 Only last wee.k I saw a patient who had thus obtained fiftv tablets of a powerful barbiturate with which she attempted suicide—and nearly succeeded.”