Over-The-Counter Pharmacy Prohibits After Codeine Related Deaths

Related deaths in Australia have been more than doubled in number between the year 2000 and 2009. With this, a bid was raised to ban the over-the-counter pharmacy sales of codeine drugs.

Codeine Drugs are an opioid pain medication and is sometimes called as narcotic. It is used to treat mild to moderate and severe pain. Individuals should have the doctor's prescription before even taking the mentioned drugs.  If it was mistakenly used or overuse, the effect could be dangerous and life-threatening.

According to a research published in the Medical journal of Australia, the drive to ban the codeine drugs was due to the increase in cases of accidental overdose.

A proposal was released due to the complaints of pharmacists, to end or ban those sales of painkillers such as Panadeine Forte without a doctor's prescription, suggested by the Therapeutic Goods Administration.

They even added that it is indeed an increase of drug of abuse and suggests painkillers which contain codeine prescription -only from July.

Relatively, codeine-related deaths have risen from 3.5 to 8.7 per million populations between 2000 and 2009, found by Amanda Roxburgh with her colleagues from the National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre, University of NSW.

According to them, of the 1437 deaths, under half of them was an accidental overdose while the remaining a third was due to intentional self-harm. Most of those who intentionally did the abuse have the history of mental health problems. While those who have accidentally overdosed have a history of substance use problems, experiencing chronic pain which leads them to inject drugs.

With the following bid to ban, there are oppositions with it, like the Pharmacy Guild who have criticized the sudden turnaround of sales to those who have the doctor's prescription only. However, the Australian and New Zealand College of Anesthetists have agreed with it.

Ted Shipton, College Spokesman Professor, stressed that codeine processed into morphine where people can easily get addicted to it. Caution in its use is needed and should be addressed, he said.