“THE medical profession and the addicted community has developed a complex, symbiotic, mutually dependent relationship that does none of us any good. Basically, they pretend to be ill, and we pretend to treat them. And thousands of public employees make a good living out of it. Prescribing for opiate addicts is like throwing petrol on a fire; pointless, counterproductive, stupid, self-defeating. And yet we keep doing it. I have a radical and potentially unpopular suggestion . . . Let’s just stop.”
Dr Phil Peverley vents his spleen, in Pulse (June 22)