Painkiller supplies called 'inadequate' in drugstores serving NYC minorities

April 5, 2000
Web posted at: 5:18 p.m. EDT (2118 GMT)

From staff reports

NEW YORK (CNN) -- Drugstores in minority neighborhoods of New York City do not stock adequate supplies of pain medications for cancer patients and other people with prescriptions to relieve physical suffering, a medical study says.

"Members of racial and ethnic minority groups are at substantial risk for the undertreatment of pain," said researchers in a study published Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine. Other studies have found that physicians don't prescribe painkillers as often for nonwhite patients.

	MESSAGE BOARD
The state of race relations

Acetaminophen with codeine, morphine, Fentanyl skin patches and other pain medicines were included in the new study. Crime rates, educational levels, household incomes and the proportions of residents 65 or older were factors in the analyses by a team of researchers led by Dr. R. Sean Morrison of the Mount Sinai School of Medicine.

Pharmacists gave researchers these reasons for not having sufficient supplies: little demand for painkillers among their customers, concerns about disposal of out-of-date narcotics, fear of illicit use, fraud and theft, according to the Morrison report.

Participating in the study were 347 pharmacies. In neighborhoods with 80 percent or higher white populations, 72 percent of the drugstores had adequate pain medicines in stock. In neighborhoods with less than 40 percent white populations, 25 percent of the drugstores had adequate supplies.

In neighborhoods where blacks were 40 percent or more of the population, 30 percent of the drugstores maintained sufficient supplies. Where Hispanics accounted for 40 percent or more, 34 percent of the drugstores were adequately stocked. Where Asians were 40 percent or more, 25 percent of the drugstores had enough pain medication in stock.

Overall, pharmacies in areas of relatively high burglary rates were less likely to carry adequate supplies of painkillers compared to drugstores in neighborhoods of much lower burglary rates, the study found.

The researchers found "no significant differences" between chain drugstores and independent pharmacies in the pain-medication supplies they maintained to dispense to customers.

Failure to stock adequate amounts and kinds of painkillers "calls for a program to educate pharmacists about the safe and appropriate use" of pain medications, the researchers wrote. Also, they said a fresh evaluation is needed of government regulations that may act as disincentives for pharmacists to stock controlled substances.

In an associated editorial published in the New England journal, Dr. Harold P. Freeman of North General Hospital, New York, and Dr. Richard Payne of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, New York, wrote:

"A growing body of compelling and disturbing evidence points to inferior medical care for black Americans, even if they are on an equal economic footing with whites. Differences in access to treatment and quality of care are at least part of the reason why the rates of death from some diseases are higher among blacks than among whites."

Several medical studies suggest "a subtle form of racial bias on the part of medical-care providers," the doctors wrote. "Physicians as well as pharmacists, police officers and others must learn to see people not through the lens of race but instead as the individual persons they are."

CNN Correspondent Deborah Feyerick contributed to this report.

New England Journal of Medicine
Mount Sinai School of Medicine

Note: Pages will open in a new browser window

External sites are not endorsed by CNN Interactive.