ACCORDING to papers recently published in the British Medical Journal, pain killers and sleeping pills are transforming us into a society addicted to opiate-based prescribed medication.

These chemical crutches, if misused, also fuel demand for recreational drugs.

Whether or not drug companies and drug dealers amount to either side of the same coin, the latest report from California, also published in the British Medial Journal, indicates that such prescribed medication makes it four or five times more likely that users may die prematurely.

Those of us involved in mental-health care have for some time been aware of the control role of psychiatrists in reaching for the pills in order to smother the symptoms of mental illness, together with the personality of the ill person.

This easy option is made easier by the vulnerability of mentally ill people.

One might have supposed that the appalling suicide rate among those treated for mental illness ought to have served as a warning. Not so.

The pharmaceutical quick-fix of the consultant psychiatrist has mushroomed into a disaster waiting to happen to society as a whole.

Those of us sane enough to turn down opiate-based medication would be well advised to do so.

Gareth Papps, Main Street, Stillington, York.