Painkillers spark new drug crisis
The use of prescription painkillers has soared in Victoria with the number of patients being treated in hospital emergency departments more than doubling in the past five years and medical professionals becoming increasingly concerned about painkiller abuse.
Victorian health experts say the developing crisis has been partly driven by suburban white-collar patients who get “hooked” after being prescribed opiate-based pills such as morphine and oxycodone for chronic pain.
The clinical director of alcohol and drug services at Southern and Eastern Health, Dr Matthew Frei, said that the number of painkiller addicts going to the Monash Medical Centre and Dandenong Hospital emergency departments jumped from around 150 in 2005 to 300 so far this year.
The problem had been fuelled by patients being prescribed pain medication after orthopedic surgery and an increase in dosages to relieve pain.
Dr Frei said “that can often become a battle against pain that the doctor and patient can never win”. He said addicted patients often “doctor-shopped” to get new prescriptions or went to an emergency department.
The chief of harm-reduction group Anex, John Ryan, told The Sunday Age newspaper that “one of the complications of pharmaceutical use is half-life. It means people can take a drug and think they’ve cleared it from their system because they don’t feel any effects but it’s still there and puts them at risk of overdose”.
