GPs have got Britain 'hooked on painkillers'

An all-party parliamentary group on drug misuse has found that Doctors are unwittingly fuelling the growing number of Britons hooked on prescription drugs by giving patients dangerously high doses of medicines that can prove highly addictive.

It was found that many GPs ignore official advice about handing out repeat prescriptions for powerful drugs such as benzodiazepine tranquilisers. The Home Office blames the mis-use benzodiazepines for causing 17,000 deaths since their introduction in the Sixties.

There was also evidence that some family doctors are contributing to growing problems associated with these substances by not taking seriously enough requests for help from addicts, and by mismanaging patients with chronic pain.

The Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency, which oversees drug safety, said the deaths of 1,135 people were suspected of having been caused by an adverse reaction to legal drugs in the last 13 months, including 25 who overdosed.