Prescription Painkillers Are Killing More Australians Than Ice or Heroin

What if you were reading this….in an email? Keep up to date with VICE and subscribe to our weekly newsletter. Forget ice or MDMA or whatever scary substances tabloids are splashing across their front pages this week—it's prescription painkillers that are Australia's most serious drug problem. A new report from the National drug and Alcohol Research Centre (NDARC) released on Monday reveals that the rate of accidental deaths due to pharmaceutical opioids is increasing rapidly in Australia, with hundreds dying of prescription painkiller overdoses each year. Taking data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics, NDARC found that almost 600 Australians between the ages of 15 and 54 died from accidental opioid overdoses in 2013, the most recent year that drug-related death statistics were recorded and finalised. For comparison, recorded ice-related deaths hover between 100-200 per year. While some of these deaths were due to heroin, the vast majority—70 percent—counted prescription opioids as their cause. And it is projected that this number will rise. We're taught to link drug overdoses with dole-bludging, hard-partying young people. But the NDARC research reveals that older it's Australians addicted to prescription painkillers like codeine who are most at risk. Lead author of the new research Amanda Roxburgh explained that there has been a complete reversal in Australia's opioid culture. Opioid-related deaths among baby boomers are now higher than those of younger Australians at the peak of the heroin epidemic in 2001. "The opioid related deaths we are seeing today are showing very different patterns to what we saw at the peak of the heroin epidemic in the late 1990s and early 2000s," she said. "The vast majority of deaths involve prescription opioids rather than heroin, including strong painkillers such as oxycodone and fentanyl, and are among older Australians in their 30s, 40s, and 50s. By contrast the rate of death among very young Australians aged 15-24 are low and among those aged 24 to 35 they are declining." One prescription opioid that has been linked to hundreds of deaths as well as severe health problems is highly addictive codeine, currently available over the counter in Australia. As VICE has previously reported, people of all ages have found themselves hooked on the relatively cheap painkillers that are much more regulated in the United States and Europe. That era is coming to an end, though, with the medication being reclassified by the Therapeutic Goods Administration in 2018. From February, it will no longer be available over the counter in a move designed to reduce rates of death and injury.

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