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Australian doctors want restrictions on addictive codeine-based medicine

Xinhua, May 1, 2015 Adjust font size:

Medicines containing codeine should be restricted to prescriptions to prevent the highly addictive painkillers from causing any more harm, top pain medicine experts in Australia said on Friday.

The Faculty of Pain Medicine at the Australian and New Zealand College of Anaesthetists (ANZCA) wants the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) to reclassify the products, Associated Australian Press (AAP) reported.

They say that as painkillers containing the weak opiate are ineffective, highly addictive and harmful, they should only be supplied with a doctor's prescription.

In Australia, more than 16 million packs of over-the-counter codeine medicines are sold, at a value of 110 million U.S. dollars annually.

Tolerance can be built up quickly and many addicts are able to gather more pills than recommended by buying from multiple chemists.

It is seen as a middle-class addiction and doctors have called for it on multiple occasions to be banned from over-the-counter sales.

Overdosing on codeine can cause internal bleeding, gastrointestinal harm, failures in the liver and kidney, and even death.

Faculty board member Professor Stephan Schug told AAP a low amount of codeine is commonly added to paracetamol or ibuprofen but can quickly become addictive.

"My last patient told me that after work he goes to four pharmacies and gets 20 lots of tablets," Schug told AAP on Friday.

"Not having them listed as prescription-only is more or less failing to protect the Australian community from these harmful side-effects, particularly as their analgesic benefit is very limited.

"We work in intensive care and see the catastrophic consequences of these drugs." Endi