§ Lord Monkswellasked Her Majesty's Government:
On average how many prescriptions for tranquillisers are made out by the National Health Service in each week, and how long each prescription lasts.
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§ Lord HeskethI regret that we do not hold the information in the form requested. Official data for tranquillisers are aggregated with that for sedatives. In Great Britain in 1987 community pharmacists dispensed around 13.1 million prescriptions for sedatives and tranquillisers. The therapeutic group sedatives and tranquillisers includes only some of the drugs known as benzodiazepines. It does not include benzodiazepine sleeping tablets. If benzodiazepine tranquillisers and sleeping tablets are added together there were 25.5 million prescriptions for these drugs in Great Britain in 1987.