LETTER : Three decades of ban on drugs

Sir: I cannot resist reminding your readers that in 1966 doctors in Ipswich adopted a voluntary ban on the prescribing of amphetamines and succeeded in eliminating them completely from the environment. Doctors no longer prescribe them and chemists no longer stock them. This pattern was endorsed at the Annual Meeting of the British Medical Association in 1968, and it is interesting to see that, 28 years later [with the Government's proposed ban on amphetamine-style slimming pills], things have gone full circle (report, 9 April).

Dr Frank Wells

Director

Department of Medicine

The Association of the

British Pharmaceutical Industry

London SW1