text: Speaking as a retired physician, it is all too easy to obtain narcotics by misrepresentation although legally prescribed, as the author (very usefully and bravely) points out.
  The obvious solution is a national register for all who are prescribed narcotics, no one is hut if this is used properly -- there is no shame in taking narcotics if you have cancer -- but some physicians are easy targets and such a register would show them up.