A quarter of a million people have been on them for five years or more. Every year 14 per cent of the adult population in the UK take a benzodiazepine, either as a sleeping pill or a tranquilliser.Īccording to one study, 1.5 per cent of adults in the UK have been taking one of the benzodiazepines for a year or longer. In 1980 nearly 40 million prescriptions for these drugs were written by family doctors alone in the UK, at a cost to the National Health Service of almost $45 million. Along with its less famous cousins in the benzodiazepine family, it is prescribed principally to alleviate anxiety. Valium is the most profitable drug in history and enjoys an entry in the Guinness Book of Records as the most widely prescribed drug in the world. In the end Roche lost their case because the authors were able to prove that Valium has become to minor tranquillisers what Hoover has become to vacuum cleaners. No, their action was against the authors’ use of the Valium trade mark in the book. But that was not what Hoffmann-La Roche were objecting to. The book brought together much of the bad news about the benzodiazepine group of drugs - of which Valium is the Big Daddy. LAST YEAR Hoffmann-La Roche sued the authors of a J,ook called Stopping Valium. But, as Ron Lacey explains, drugs like Valium can bring far more worries than they ever take away. We just pray they’ll make us worry less about them. Most of us realise that these drugs won’t make our problems disappear. New internationalist 132 February 1984 MENTAL HEALTH Effects of minor tranquillisersĪt this moment well over 100 million people have one of the minor tranquillisers coursing around in their bloodstream.
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