ARE DRUGS TOO EASILY OBTAINABLE?

Chronicle (Levin), 3 November 1949, Page 9

ARE DRUGS TOO EASILY OBTAINABLE?

Press Association J

-^r-~ : Coroner Cails Attention To Rise In Deaths

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AUCKLAND, Nov. 2. "The increasing number of deaths from overdoses of drugs, to.say nothing of the more numerous cases where fatal results have not eventuated, must give wide coneern," said the Coroner (Mr A. Addison)' when an inquest was held into' the death of Muriel Selina Norden, aged G5, a widow. "Drugs themselves are rather too easily obtainable, and a normal prescription is, 1 understand, for a quan"tity whieh if talcen coutrary to instruetions would constitute a fatal overdose, " continued Mr Addison. " Apart from those persons who deiiberately take an overdase with the intention of committing suicide, there are two weilrecognised dangers ariking from the use. of these drugs: automatic repetition of the dosage by the patient. because of confusion'of mind from the intiai dose; and, secondly, the cunning and sly metliods adopted by the jjatient to aecumulate a supply. "In the present ease it is noted that prescriptions by two dilferent medical praetitioners were dispensed within two days in April of this year," said the Coroner. "I am aware tliat the medieal profession in general is fully alive to the dangers I have referred to, and 1 suggest that those dangers would be reduced if praetitioners exercised extraordinary fiaution in prescribing, and limited any preseription given to a few day's supply, and ensured as'far as possible that the administering of the drug was not left to the patients but was entrusted to persons ivho were previouslv informed as to the dangers and warned to guard against them. "The Coroner returned a verdiet that Mrs Norden died on Seetember 22 at her home in Ponsonby from barbiturate poisoning resulting from a self-adminis-tered overdose of sleeping tablets.