The present Guidelines may be used by governments and also by health professionals. The Guidelines can be used: (1) as an educational tool to inform interested parties about the relationship between national drug control policy and the availability of opioid analgesics for pain relief; (2) as a policy evaluation tool; and (3) as a basis for formulating new policies or improving existing policies.

For educational purposes, the Guidelines can be distributed to the relevant government and non-government organizations, especially to those individuals and groups who are interested in drug control and improvement of cancer pain relief and palliative care.

The need to evaluate policy is clear, but the way to do it may not be. Several steps are recommended to governments:

I.	Identify a person or committee, including the National Competent Authority and health professionals, to study the Guidelines. Governments may wish to organize a special meeting or workshop of regulators and health care practitioners to discuss the self-assessment and complete the Checklist;
II.	Obtain additional information from the key resource materials (see Annex 2);
III.	Obtain up-to-date copies of the national drug control policies and study them;s[10]
IV.	Use the Self-Assessment Checklist in Section X to assess the policies;
V.	Establish dialogue with policy-makers to make the necessary changes.

 

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^[10]        For an index of national laws and regulations for narcotic drugs and psychotropic substances see: UN International Drug Control Programme, 1994 (15).