Health experts fear a nationwide epidemic in overdose deaths from prescription painkillers and are calling for the states and territories to take action.
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An Australian National University researcher said up to 70 per cent of Australian opioid deaths could be caused by legal medications.
The university's David McDonald said there was an absence of action at a national level on the dangers of prescribed medications, and states and territories urgently needed systems to track drug-related fatalities.
The visiting fellow at the ANU's National Centre for Epidemiology and Population Health said there were signs Australia was following a trend seen in the US.
A rise in the amount of opioid analgesics being dispensed in the US was closely related to that nation's escalating death toll from the drugs, he said.
Mr McDonald said states and territories should install a system where prescription, ambulance and hospital data on drug use was collated.
The most recent study of opioid deaths in Australia, published last year by the National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre, revealed that of 500 opioid deaths of people aged 15 to 54, only 30 per cent were the result of heroin use.
The centre predicted a steadily increasing death toll in Australia from the use of the drugs.
In 1999 older Australians accounted for less than 10 per cent of opioid deaths, but by 2010 they were estimated to be responsible for nearly 25 per cent, according to the centre.
Mr McDonald said the growing rate of deaths among older people suggested prescription medication was the cause rather than illicit drugs, and as Australian doctors prescribed more of the medications, he expected more deaths.
"I would like to see … states and territories develop a comprehensive early warning system relating to drug use and drug-related harms, part of which would be ambulance data and hospital data," Mr McDonald said.
Pharmacy Guild of Australia
national president Kos Sclavos said fewer than 5 per cent of Australians who took controlled medications like opioid analgesics were seeking a replacement for illicit drugs, but patients were seeing different doctors for pain relief and developing addictions because no one practitioner was overseeing their drug intake.
''There's not a stereotypical person who's now got a controlled drug medication problem, it's people in suits, it's mums with two kids,'' he said.
Mr Sclavos said the implementation of an electronic reporting system for controlled drugs, to operate at a pharmacy level, had been held up as state and territory governments were unwilling to provide funding.
He said some doctors were becoming hesitant to prescribe opioid medications, even to those who would greatly benefit from the pain relief they offered, because they were aware of widespread addiction.
''You do have a lot of people walking around with intense pain, and for short-term use these products are ideal, that's what they were made for,'' he said.
Mr McDonald said Australian research demonstrated a very large increase in prescription rates of opioid medications, in part because the need for chronic pain management was growing as the population aged, and in part because new versions of the drugs had become available.
He suspected that doctors were very aware of the potential dangers of older opioid analgesic medications, like morphine and pethidine, whereas new forms of the drug were known to be safer, so doctors were less hesitant in prescribing them.