Coroner’s Comment On Deaths From Over Doses Of Drugs

Wanganui Chronicle, 3 November 1949, Page 6

Coroner’s Comment On Deaths From Over Doses Of Drugs

AUCKLAND, Last Night (PA).— Reading of the number of deaths from overdoses of drugs, to say nothing of the mor e numerous cases where fatal results have not eventuated, must give wide concern, said the coroner, Mr. A. Addison, when an inquest was held into the death of Muruel Selina Norden aged 65, widow. 'Drugs themselves are rather too easily obtainable and the normal prescription is, I understand, for a quantity which, if taken contrary to instructions, would constitute a fatal overdose,” continued Mr. Addison.

“Apart from those persons who de liberately take an overdose with the intention of committing suicide, then are two well recognised dangers arising from the use of these drugs; thb automatic repetition of the dosage by a patient because of confusion of the mind from the initial dose and, secondly, the cunning and sly methods adopted by a patient to accumulate a supply. "In the present case, it is noted that prescriptions by two different medical practitioners were dispensed within two days in April of this year,” said the coroner. “I am aware that the medical profession in general is fully alive to the dangers I have referred to and I suggest those dangers would be reduced if practitioners exercised extraordinary caution in prescribing, limited any prescription given to a few days’ supply, e nsured as far as possible that the administering of the drug was not left to patients, but entrusted to persons who were previously informed as to dangers and warned to guard against them.” Th e coroner returned a verdict that Mrs. Norden died on September 22 at her home in Ponsonby from barbiturate poisoning, resulting from a self-administered overdose of sleeping tablets.