Meant to heal, but addicts die instead
09 Nov 2006
Annie Freeda Cruez
KUALA LUMPUR: Several drug addicts on Drug Substitution Therapy (DST) have died.
But their deaths are not caused by the medicine prescribed to them by doctors.
Instead, it was due to "doctor-hopping" — the addicts would go to several doctors to collect as much medication as they could.
They would then abuse the medication, which was meant for therapeutic use, and die of an overdose or other complications.
The current medication used for DST are buprenorphine (Subutex), methadone and naltrexone.
Currently, there are an estimated 10,000 drug addicts on buprenorphine and 1,500 on methadone.
http://www.nst.com.my/Current_News/nst/Thursday/National/20061109101827/Article/index_html