steiny@scc.UUCP (Don Steiny) (09/25/86)
** Four of 10 doctors in study used drugs Boston(AP) -- Nearly 40 percent of doctors under age 40 admitted in a survey that they used marijuana or cocaine to get high with friends, and a quarter of doctors of all ages said they recently treated themselves with mind-affecting drugs. Overall, more than half the physicians and three-quarters of the medical students who participated in the Harvard University survey said they had used drugs at least once for self-treatment, to get high or to help them stay awake. Only 1 percent of the doctors surveyed said their drug use had ever caused them to give poor care to patients. Most physicians use these drugs only occasionally, if at all. But the researchers say medical students and young doctors are more experienced with than drugs than are older physicians. And they predict the proportion of drug-taking doctors will grow as medical students set up practice and take their habits with them. "Perhaps for the first time," they wrote, "appriciable although small proportions of persons entering medicine have histories of extensive drug use and dependence." But they concluded that the drug use they found "should not be cause for great alarm," because it simply reflects growing drug use throughout American life. "When psychoactive drug use becomes a fad and is approved by the broad spectrum of society, just about all groups get involved," said Dr. William E. McAuliffe, the physicians and pharmacists as well, the people who are usually the keepers of the drugs." McAuliffe, a researcher at the Harvard School of Public Health, published his findings in today's New England Journal of Medicine. His study was based on a random sruvery of 500 practicing physicians and 504 medical students in Massachusetts conducted in November 1984. Among older doctors, the most common questionable use of drugs was self-treatment, taking opiates and tranquilizers for pain and stress without seeking another phsyician's care. "Most people in medicine would recommend that someone not self- treat," said McAuliffe. "But my study shows that a fairly substantial proportion do at some time in their lives." In the year before the sruvey, 25 percent of the physicians said they treated themselves with a psychoactive, or mind-affecting, drug, while 42 percent had done this at some point in their lives. Recreational drug use is mor common among young physicians. The study found that besides marijuana, these doctors use "the full spectrum of psychoactive drugs," and this has become "an important cause of drug related impariment for them." Over half of the doctors up to age 40 have used drugs recreationally at some time in their lives. However, 38 percent of those under age 40 have continued to use drugs, mostly marijauan and cocaine, to get high with friends. Santa Cruz Sentinel Sept. 25, 1986 p. A-10 -- scc!steiny Don Steiny @ Don Steiny Software 109 Torrey Pine Terrace Santa Cruz, Calif. 95060 (408) 425-0382