Doctors’ groups are urging the states not to opt out of new rules making codeine-containing analgesics available by prescription only.
As reported by the limbic this month, following intense lobbying by the Pharmacy Guild of Australia, state and territory health ministers called on the federal government to review the TGA’s decision to upschedule OTC codeine (see here).
The guild has been lobbying hard for exemptions to the TGA rule which comes into force February next year, putting forward an alternative model to allow pharmacists to sell codeine without a prescription in certain scenarios.
A spokesperson for the TGA said each state and territory is empowered to implement such an exemption.
But this model “carries a serious risk of increased harms and potentially preventable deaths and thus cannot be supported by the medical community or consumer advocates,” the Royal Australasian College of Physicians wrote in a letter to NSW Health Minister Brad Hazzard this week.
The letter was co-signed by the heads of the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners, Rural Doctors Association of Australia, Pain Australia and Consumers Health Forum of Australia.