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Monday, July 8, 2019

Doctors Can No Longer Prescribe Narcotics to Continue Addictions, 1919

From the Monroe Journal, July 8, 1919

Narcotic Drug Rules Are Made More Stringent. . . Physicians Cannot Now Prescribe Merely to Relieve Suffering Caused from Lack of Drug

Washington, July 6—Drug addicts may not obtain narcotics on physician’s prescriptions from lack of the drug, under stringent regulations issued today by the bureau of internal revenue governing the quantity which may be ordered by physicians. It was possible under the old regulations for a physician to prescribe “more than is apparently needed to meet the needs of a patient in the ordinary case,” as he stated on the prescription for the purpose which the unusual quantity was to be used. This privilege is now revoked.

“The act of December 17, 1914, as amended by the act of February 24, 1919,” the new regulation states, “permits the furnishing of narcotic drugs by means of prescription issued by a practitioner for legitimate medical uses, but the supreme court has held that an order for morphine issued to a habitual user thereof, not in the course of professional treatment, in an attempted cure of the habit, but for the purpose of providing the user with morphine sufficient to keep him comfortable by maintaining his customary use, is not a prescription within the meaning of the act. In view of this decision, the writer of such an order, the druggist who fills it and a person obtaining drugs thereunder will all be regarded as guilty of violating the law.”

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