Doctors v. Dope

As many a novelist has been quick to grasp, the physician's easy access to narcotics is often tragically hard to resist. In California alone, reports the Los Angeles County Medical Bulletin, the state Board of Medical Examiners must consider 50 to 60 cases of addiction or illegal personal use of drugs among doctors every year. Chief excuse offered by errant physicians: "Overwork and fatigue, usually attributed to the size of the practice and to night calls." They also plead such pressures as domestic difficulties and pain of a chronic disease or operation.

But against the piddling 5% average recovery rate among lay addicts, California's fallen healers have also scored a phenomenal comeback record of 92%. Main reason, writes Dr. Louis E. Jones, the state medical board's secretary-treasurer, is the humane technique of coping with them. The board immediately revokes an offending physician's license--but usually lets him go on practicing on probation for three to five years. For this privilege, he must give up all use of narcotics unless prescribed for him (or his patients) by a licensed physician. The hope of reinstatement proves a tremendous incentive, but failure to kick the habit is equally strong medicine. With few exceptions, those who lose the battle commit suicide.

Though U.S. drug addiction is on the rise, Dr. Erwin Nelson, former medical chief of the Food and Drug Administration, reported one encouraging note last week. Addiction among teen-agers is falling, Dr. Nelson told the New Mexico Pharmaceutical Association. Of the total 43,963 U.S. addicts on record from 1953 to 1957, the number of those under 21 fell from 1,500 in 1953 to 900 in 1955, and below 800 last year.

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