Colin's Blog

”Patients who are addicted to prescription drugs can be extremely manipulative in their efforts to get GPs to prescribe them more drugs.”
Dr Steve Field, chairman of the Royal College of General Practitioners, February 2008

Dr Field, in saying that the Royal College would ‘take on board’ the findings of the APPG, then followed the usual line of avoiding the question of how patients become addicted to tranquillisers in the first place and mitigated any responsibility for doctors by referring to patient abuse of prescription drugs and lumping this together with addiction through over the counter drugs.

These days the purchase of drugs on the internet is emphasised in any report of the 1 million plus iatrogenic tranquilliser addicts in the UK. This is a recent phenomenon, is a complete red-herring, and has nothing to do with the indisputable fact that hundreds of thousands of unsuspecting patients since the beginning of the 1960s were never warned about what could happen to them, either by their doctors, or by leaflets accompanying their prescriptions. Neither were they effectively protected by government and regulators who were consistently and regularly told by campaigners and patients that doctors in the NHS, in large numbers, were ignoring the four weeks advice and were prescribing as they had before.

Medical and government defence of the benzodiazepine scandal has moved through several stages, not necessarily in this order and not necessarily one at a time. Sometimes previous positions are resurrected:

• The drugs are not addictive
• And if they are, it is because of an addictive personality
• Patients ask for them
• Patients bully doctors into prescribing
• The drugs are cheap to provide for government
• Doctors have no time to assist in withdrawal/doctors find it very difficult
• There are no alternatives to pills in UK healthcare
• Aware or former iatrogenic addicts are merely seeking compensation
• It’s all down to defective genes
• It’s all in the past, it was regrettable but we have learned lessons
• Patients abuse the drugs and must be controlled
• Benzo campaigners select their evidence


The view of patients being the authors of their own demise and deluded victims of their own pre-existing psychological condition began with the pharmaceutical companies and the experts who were linked to them. Until 1988 there was no UK regulatory recognition that benzodiazepines were addictive and should be used with caution. There had been a statement in 1980 by the Committee on the Review of Medicines that “there was little convincing evidence that benzodiazepines were efficacious in the treatment of anxiety after four months' continuous treatment.” Since tens of thousands of people before and after were prescribed them for decades, the conclusion you might think is that although they might not work, they were fairly harmless. Large numbers of doctors disbelieved the first and agreed with the second.

But there was evidence, some of it long before 1980 that benzodiazepines were addictive and had severe side-effects—it was merely a case of not proven in the eyes of regulators. Benzodiazepines had from the beginning a large placebo effect on those who prescribed them and those who regulated drugs.

“How the dependence potential of the benzodiazepines was overlooked by doctors...is a matter for amazement and casts shame on the medical profession which claims to be scientifically based...”
Professor C. Heather Ashton DM FRCP, Bristol and District Tranquilliser Project AGM, October 2005

And as campaigner Mick Behan wrote to the House of Commons Health Committee inquiry into the pharmaceutical industry in 2004:

“Most of the benzodiazepines—Valium, Librium, Mogadon, were on the market before the Medicines Act of 1968. These drugs were issued "Licences of Right". The Licences of Right were a registration procedure and involved no assessment of safety or efficacy. Assessment was deferred to a future review by the CRM. Significantly, those reviews did not occur until 1983/84. By then the damage was done, the huge benzo addict population had been created and still exists to this day.”

There has been much learned discussion over the years amongst scientists and lawyers about precisely when doctors should have known about the addiction potential of tranquilliser/hypnotics. They should have known from the beginning, since nearly every chemical that medicine had ever used to influence the mind had turned out to be addictive. But in medicine it seems, until either an overwhelming mass of new independent scientific evidence or rare pharmaceutical company admission alters the view of a drug, damage done to patients and reported by them does not exist. That is the single most depressing fact about this age of drug company controlled medicine—ostensibly for the benefit of patients and the alleviation of suffering—only those with a positive experience to report are believed. If the positive is accentuated for long enough however, it becomes impossible, it seems, to admit what has happened, take direct action to stop it continuing, or help those affected.

“The scale of the problem is so large...that is beyond the grasp of many politicians and people in power to solve it...you have this huge problem with a huge number of people involved and yet we seem as a society to be incapable of acting on it. We can only cope with problems that are so big...we can’t cope with this one.”
Phil Woolas MP, Croydon Benzodiazepine Conference, November 2000

Benzodiazepines became a huge experiment on the population. It is possible but not likely that Roche and subsequent ‘me-too’ manufacturers had no idea at first that that was what was to happen, but their marketing tactics were certainly aimed at expanding the market as wide as sales tactics and permitted control of research information, could make it. The experiment in profit generation without responsibility for human injury, certainly worked and it drew in vast numbers of people who were not mentally ill and who had no organic disease. Subsequently many of them became very ill, many losing homes, families, jobs and future—things which cannot be given back and remain unacknowledged to this day. Benzodiazepines, contrary to the message coming from government and drug companies, were only in the minority of cases prescribed for clinical anxiety—they were as Professor Heather Ashton rightly says, prescribed for everything:

“[Benzodiazepines] have been prescribed for sports injuries, muscle spasms, premenstrual tension, exam nerves, depression, general malaise and much else. Because they make some people feel good at first...these prescriptions tend to be continued long-term.”
Bristol and District Tranquilliser Project AGM, October 2005

The manufacturers have always maintained the line that tranquillisers had invariably been prescribed for clinical anxiety but what degree of anxiety would even justify the injuries that benzodiazepines can inflict? Rather than for clinical anxiety however, tranquillisers have been prescribed, and led to addiction, for everything from the death of a pet to vertigo. The Department of Health has never wavered from the same line too, and has formulated a message of all reported patient adverse effects being caused by a pre-existing mental health problem. In their view such things as brain atrophy, severe muscle and joint problems, gastro-intestinal disturbances, distorted nerve sensations and a whole host of other physical symptoms are produced by some undiscovered (but always undemonstrated) psychological condition. Such assertions would disgrace a fantasy pot-boiler, but are all too readily parroted in the political world of pharmaceutical/medical defence. Government relies on a variety of allies in its denial but above all on the fact that most of those affected never make the connection between their ill health and the prescriptions. Why would they, unless they research the facts—patient leaflets and doctors avoid all mention of serious side-effects; doctors because they accept what regulators and drug companies do not tell them and leaflets because regulators see it as their duty to rubber stamp the crafted pharmaceutical message they contain.

Interestingly, although he made few public pronouncements on the drugs he created, Roche scientist Leo Sternbach always insisted it was not the drugs, but the doctors prescribing them, who were responsible for the damage. He had a point, but the general message simply does not stand up in the real world where the drugs were prescribed. Although doctors over-prescribed and mis-prescribed, for which they were certainly culpable, the sales arms of Roche, Upjohn Wyeth and others with their messages of benefit without side-effects had underscored what they did. No drug company told doctors to prescribe for a limited period in the interests of safety. No drug company warned doctors that the drugs were addictive in excess and for years they fought the truth that they were.

The UK Government will tell you anything it thinks sounds right and seemingly doesn’t care if the statement is obviously bogus and illogical. They will tell you for instance that abolishing parking charges for visitors and patients to hospitals in England, as Wales intended to do in 2008, cannot be done because ‘forcing hospitals to stop charging would breach the Government's drive to cut carbon emissions by encouraging car use.’ They will tell you that their actions on reducing benzodiazepine prescribing have worked, are working and that they ‘take the problem seriously’. That they ignore what the problem is, refuse to help the severely afflicted and avoid thinking about the fact that the problem has existed for nearly 50 years, demonstrates the untruth of what they say. At any time, the Department of Work and Pensions which does not officially recognise most benzodiazepine symptoms and which oversees social security benefits, may withdraw incapacity benefits from the severely affected who do not tick the boxes. Many of those suffering from symptoms which government refuses to acknowledge and which many doctors do not recognise because they have never been told they exist, live in fear of benefit withdrawal, adding a further impact on their lives, beyond the effects benzodiazepine drugs have previously inflicted.

Ministers have no expertise in the work of most departments they find themselves in charge of. Ministers in the Department of Health are no exception. They are therefore reliant on advisers who are deemed to be unbiased and expert. Ministers have no way of estimating how expert and unbiased they are and perhaps no motivation. Such advisers are the ones the minister asks for a view on any issue raised by patients and campaigners. When former health minister Hazel Blears told a campaigner that she believed benzodiazepine activists used ‘selective evidence’ that view would have originated from her advisers. The fact that campaigners know this is not true gives them no ability to demonstrate it.

The existence of ministers gives complete immunity to the flawed beliefs and actions of advisers and civil servants as they act in their name. Advice on psychotropic medicines comes from the psychiatric sphere of medicine—a sphere that it has been said owes its claim to scientific knowledge simply by virtue of its alliance with pharmaceutical manufacturers and their drugs. With some notable exceptions, such psychiatrists have no motivation to divorce themselves from the benefit message of manufacturers whose financial support and influence has often fostered their careers. Advisers are as a rule, those whose involvement with the pharmaceutical industry has propelled them to their positions. They claim to be the holders of scientific ‘truth’ and the Department of Health accepts it, producing policies based on pharmaceutical company ‘expertise’ and ‘evidence’.

But the truth is held by patients and not science. Ray Nimmo said recently on withdrawal from benzodiazepines and their consequences:

“I swapped depression, anxiety, paranoia, agoraphobia etc for physical symptoms - damage which I now know is permanent. Fifteen years of abdominal muscle spasm resolved on stopping only to be replaced by muscle pain elsewhere. Muscle problems do seem to be a common feature as well as sensory, gastro trouble as well as some anxiety/depression and cognitive impairment. We all seem to be left with something. Heather Ashton says in all her years she heard from only one person who said they had no symptoms. I heard from one... but she was put on a stew of ADs, APs and an assortment of other meds. The first ten years of insomnia were worst for me - improved lately if I resist the urge to nap. Not easy though and I often give in.”

“Every man is guilty of all the good he did not do.” Voltaire

"In England justice is open to all - just like the Ritz."
19th-century legal comment often attributed to Sir James Mathew

False rhino syndrome is the willingness to believe that something is other than what it is...
Human beings possess a vast capacity for misperception and for preferring to believe what they would like to believe...It is difficult to understand politics unless one grasps how ready people are to believe things that are belied by the facts.
Martin Kettle, The Guardian 31 May 2008



It is the custom in the UK parliament to refer to all members as honourable and ministers in charge of departments as right honourable.

The Right Honourable David Blunkett has been a Labour MP since 1987 and in government held two appointments very relevant to doing something about the great benzo scandal. He was Home Secretary from 2001 to 2004 when he was forced to resign after a scandal and was then appointed Secretary of State for Work and Pensions after the 2005 General Election.

In November 2005 he was again forced to resign over business dealings.

The motto of the Home Office is ‘Working together to Protect the Public’. That Department is responsible for drug classification in the UK and in spite of the best efforts of campaigners benzodiazepines have never been reclassified from C when less harmful drugs have category B or even A classifications. David Blunkett could have ensured that happened when he was minister in charge but he did not.

The Department of Work and Pensions exists it says - ‘to promote opportunity and independence for all, help individuals achieve their potential through employment, and work to end poverty in all its forms.’ There are between 1 million and 1.5 million addicted benzodiazepine victims of medicine and clinical judgement today and there were approximately the same numbers in 2001 and in 2005. Indeed there were similar numbers in 1994 (the relevance of that date will be seen below). Many of the great number addicted by doctors in their pride and ignorance were addicted decades ago and many (particularly but not exclusively) men have been unable to work and follow the normal processes of life. They are therefore poor. As Department of Works and Pensions minister, David Blunkett could have brought the plight of the benzodiazepine victims to the attention of government, but he did not.

He joined the shadow cabinet in 1992 as Shadow Health Secretary and on 24 February 1994 he wrote the following letter to Barry Haslam, a victim of prescribed lorazepam, benzodiazepine campaigner and voluntary counsellor.



H O U S E OF C O M M O N S
LONDON SW1A 0AA

DAVID BLUNKETT MP
Shadow Secretary of State for Health
and Member of Parliament for Sheffield Brightside

24 February 1994

Dear Mr Haslam
Thank you for your recent letter regarding Benzodiazepine Tranquillisers.
Dawn Primarolo and myself have been taking up cases and have advised on how best the groups involved might organise a parliamentary lobby and keep attention on these issues.

We have also tried to assist through both Parliamentary Questions and raising the matter on the floor of the House, in pushing the Government to accept its own responsibilities and to take action now to ensure that it does not happen again.

This is something we will be returning to both in the House and in terms of our own future policy development.

I am passing your letter to Paul Boateng who, as the legal affairs spokesman, has specific responsibility for the litigation side of what is a national scandal.

With all good wishes

David Blunkett MP
Shadow Secretary of State for Health

Former Tory Chancellor Nigel Lawson described the NHS as 'the closest thing the English have to a religion'. Friedrich von Hayek said that if our beliefs prove to be dependent on factual assumptions shown to be incorrect, it would be hardly moral to defend them by refusing to acknowledge the facts.

Blunkett knew the facts and knew what medicine had done in spite of its protestations of innocence. In effect by his inaction, Blunkett immorally maintained the status quo as regards benzodiazepines and allowed the situation to go on unchallenged and unaltered. He allowed the public to continue to view medicine as beneficial and good for both body and soul, when it had carried out with impunity a great scourging of the innocent and trusting.

Jan Moir, writing in the Daily Telegraph on 25 July 2007 said:

“For too long, the default attitude towards British GPs has been that they are long-suffering, hard-working and over-stressed, yet somehow remain a dedicated band of trustworthy professionals in whose hands we are safe. Instead of complaining, we should be grateful to them for any medical attention that we get. Yet you don't have to look very hard to see that there is another diagnosis that also has merit: a second opinion that suggests a malaise at the core of our primary care system, with a number of GPs who are incompetent at best, and uninterested in our welfare at worst...”

Medicine and Politics are the two areas of life that hold responsibility for a solution to the scandal; it is not the responsibility of ordinary people outside those systems – the lumpenproletariat as Marx described them, but they should be aware if only for their own protection. Adam Smith famously remarked that a man is likely to be more concerned by the imminent prospect of losing his own finger than the death of thousands in a Chinese earthquake. That is the way of humanity, there are unfortunately, few who can look outside themselves and feel empathy for the plight of others. As far as NHS activities are concerned, it is often better to not believe it.

A report from the World Health Organisation last month said that a 'toxic combination' of bad policies, economics and politics is killing people on a large scale [in the UK]... ‘Social injustice is killing people on a grand scale.' Government policies to do with benzodiazepine prescribing are contained within that condemnation – long term prescribing often leads to catastrophic ill health and to inescapable poverty. Blunkett could have helped to do something about that but he did not. It is difficult to escape the conclusion that politicians and bureaucrats who directly serve the state believe the interests of the state are supreme and not the welfare of individuals.

Steve Webb the Liberal Democrat health spokesman said in 2006:

"The fundamental priority for the NHS must be patient safety, with a culture of openness and accountability. For it to take years for incidents to be recorded and for good practice to spread is lamentable...The buck must stop at the door of the Department of Health."

It is almost fifty years since the addiction of patients by doctors with benzodiazepines began and the buck has still to reach the door of the Department of Health; medicine has been allowed to believe it did nothing wrong or avoidable. David Blunkett knew better and recognised the scandal when in opposition to government and then conveniently forgot it when Labour came to power in 1997. There may be no-one in government who recognises his responsibility, but campaigners do.

Where once journalists were active gatherers of news, now they have generally become mere passive processors of unchecked, second-hand material, much of it contrived by PR to serve some political or commercial interest. Not journalists, but churnalists. An industry whose primary task is to filter out falsehood has become so vulnerable to manipulation that it is now involved in the mass production of falsehood, distortion and propaganda. Nick Davies, The Guardian, Monday February 4, 2008

"What you see now are journalists who are grateful for news which is almost perfectly packaged to go into the paper with a ready top line. In that sense, journalism is becoming very passive. It is a processor of other people's information rather than being engaged in actively seeking out and determining what the truth of a situation is in an energetic and inquisitive way." Paul Lashmar, investigative reporter and lecturer in journalism, University College Falmouth, 4 August 2008

On 3rd September 2008, a ‘Daily Mail reporter’ and the BBC, treated the reader to the news that 'Mother's little helper' had returned as illegal drug-takers were using more Valium as a cheaper alternative to heroin. Both reporters had obviously read the same handout from DrugScope and thought no further. Both reports had no real context - presumably it would have required effort to provide it, and the Daily Mail in particular decided to reinforce the misleading statement that Valium was over-prescribed to patients in its heyday in the 1960s and 1970s. Anybody reading that would reasonably assume that this was an historical problem. This is far from the truth.

There are no reliable figures for benzodiazepine prescriptions before1978 when there were 30.6 million prescriptions. I say benzodiazepine prescriptions because Valium was not the only ‘mother’s little helper’ being prescribed, it was merely the most well known and formed part of a whole range of almost identical tranquilliser drugs – temazepam, nitrazepam, triazolam, ativan, librium, oxazepam lormetazepam, loprazolam, clonazepam, clobazam, alprazolam, flurazepam, clorazepate, flunitrazepam, bromazepam, ketazolam, medazepam and prazepam were others. From 1979 to 1989 there were a total of 297.7 million prescriptions for benzodiazepines in the UK.

1979 30.9
1980 29.1
1981 29.5
1982 29.7
1983 28.7
1984 28.0
1985 25.7
1986 25.3
1987 25.5
1988 23.2
1989 22.1
Total 297.7 million prescriptions in eleven years

The heyday for tranquillisers clearly extended beyond the 1960s/1970s and in Scotland prescription figures are rising today. Any reduction in prescribing figures is solely due to rising levels of SSRI (e.g. Prozac, Seroxat) and Z drug (e.g. zopiclone, zaleplon) prescriptions. These drugs too have their problems to say the least. Apart from that there was nothing really new in the report – in March 2006, the Observer newspaper had under the headline ‘Cocaine teens fuel big rise in Valium abuse’ also reported that ‘mother’s little helper’ was damaging a fresh generation who were using it to relax and sleep after taking cocaine or amphetamines. It noted an unawareness that:

“the little blue pills are potentially fatal when taken with alcohol, as well as being highly addictive. Patients who try to come off the tablets suffer withdrawal effects for weeks, including hallucinations and anxiety attacks, which can be worse than the symptoms that accompany withdrawal from cocaine or ecstasy.“

Although we can take issue you with the ‘several weeks’ statement which is far from true for large numbers of patients (many people requiring years to complete successful withdrawal), at least the article pointed out that Valium (and therefore its cousins) were seriously hard drugs.

But let’s highlight the plight of patients who thought they were being given medicine and let’s campaign on their plight. It will be a brave new media world when that happens. The 1 million to 1.5 million patients currently addicted to prescription benzodiazepines would appreciate the media pointing out that there is something very wrong with medicine and government avoiding all aspects of this scandal and concentrating all their energies on assistance for and control of illegal users of identical drugs.

Many of those addicted to prescriptions of Valium in its ‘heyday’ are still addicted today and many died. Side-effects number over 200 and many patients never recover. This is an aspect of the story that the media does not seem to want to find the wherewithal to analyse.