Morphine treatment of pain patients and driver fitness.

The Government of Germany is preparing an addition to the .08% law, enabling the administration to withdraw the licence of a driver having morphine in his blood. The intention is to eliminate heroin consumers from traffic. The desire had led to a discussion concerning the question whether pain patients treated with morphine should be sentenced too or whether they should be left. As a basis for the decision the published experimental studies were analysed on this topic and this included a study conducted in cooperation with researchers of the Institute for Anaesthesiology.