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There are now 183 different formulations of Valium-derived medications. Doctors in Britain issue almost 18 million prescriptions a year for them, and every GP has at least 180 long-term users on their books.
While the nation's 250,000 to 300,000 heroin users are offered substantial help from the NHS to kick their addiction, benzodiazepine addicts receive relatively little support.
Despite being highly addictive and having alarming side-effects, Valium had become one of the world's best-selling drugs by the mid-Seventies.
It was originally manufactured by Hoffmann La Roche, but the company lost its patent protection in 1985. Some 500 different versions of the drug were subsequently marketed by different companies worldwide.
Britain's growing addiction to sleeping pills and tranquilisers has prompted a series of reviews by doctors and public health chiefs.
Heather Ashton, emeritus professor of pharmacology at Newcastle University, told a meeting of the British Medical Association in January that nine out of ten GPs do not offer any sort of help to wean people off these drugs. 'We are stuck in a slough of inertia and ignorance,' she said.
Meanwhile Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt has asked the public health minister, Anna Soubry, to look at the scale of the problem and consider what steps should be taken to support addicts.
Whatever the outcome, it is likely to come too late for many of the 1.5 million people whose lives have been blighted by their addiction.
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