Medicine: Yellow Light for Tranquilizers

A sugar-coated FDA warning on the use of those popular pills

To relieve their assorted anxieties, tensions and stress, millions of Americans have at one time or another been advised to take tranquilizers. The high-water mark for the pills was reached in the recession year of 1975. But, even though sales are off by as much as one-third, 5 billion pills and capsules were prescribed in 1979 alone, with the popular drug Valium accounting for about a third of the market. But the price of a chemically induced sense of well-being can be stiff. In the eyes of critics, users of...