Are we heading down the same path as the US over the misuse of prescription opioids?
A survey commissioned by NPS Medicinewise shows widespread misuse of medications and painkillers, including codeine, especially among younger adults.
The survey, conducted last month by Galaxy Research, found one in four respondents had used medicines prescribed for someone else, or shared their medicines with a family member.
Some 39% of younger adults (millennials born in the 20 years from 1980) confessed to the practice, twice the rate of the post-war baby boomers.
NPS CEO Dr Lynn Weekes said the survey indicated that more than 1.5 million Australians have taken seven or more ibuprofen plus codeine tablets in a day, above the maximum recommended dose of six per 24 hours.
“We have found there’s a sense that people think it’s okay to take a bit extra, even to give extra medication to their kids,” Dr Weekes said.
Again, millennials were twice as likely as their parents’ generation to over-use the ibuprofen-codeine combination, and to mix alcohol and prescription pain relief.
The survey suggested as many as half a million Australians took prescription painkillers and alcohol “for the buzz”.
But Dr Weekes said a lot of misuse was unintentional. Patients cut up transdermal medicated patches, for example, in the belief they would receive half the medication dose. In reality, the rupturing of the membrane meant they’d recieve a higher dose.
Another common error was crushing tablets designed for the slow release of an active agent.
“We want to destigmatise the problem. Misuse of medications can happen to anyone,” she said.
In the Galaxy survey, responses were gathered from a cross-section of 1000 adults around Australia, and weighted for age, gender and region to reflect ABS population statistics.
Dr Weekes said unknown numbers of Australians might have unwittingly become dependent on codeine from using OTC pain relief, even though codeine has been known to be a poor analgesic for decades.
The rescheduling of codeine next year, and the disappearance of many over-the-counter pain-relief medications, meant those patients would need help and guidance to find alternative pain management.
“We really want GPs and pharmacists to start having these conversations now. Ask patients what products they are buying over the counter,” she said.
As for prescription opioids, Australia appears to have entered a danger zone.
According to Dr Weekes, prescriptions of oxycodone per head in Australia are now around the same level as they were in the United States before that country fell into a full-blown opioid-addiction crisis.
