CANBERRA, Jan. 25 (Xinhua) -- Australian medical experts have urged the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) to be cautious when deciding whether it will reduce access to strong opioids.
The TGA announced on Sunday that it would review whether General Practitioner (GPs) should be allowed to give patients prescriptions opioids for pain relief.
Data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics released in July revealed that prescription opioids such as codeine, oxycodone and morphine were responsible for two thirds of Australia's 668 overdose deaths in 2013.
Despite the danger posed by the drugs, Senior Clinical Lecturer at Australian National University (ANU) David Caldicott said that the TGA should approach changing the rules around prescribing opioids with extreme caution.
"When the medical profession ignored the signs of a prescription opiate epidemic in the US for too long, and acted precipitously by drastically reducing access, white-collar dependent patients turned to other sources, including illicit fentanyls," Caldicott said in a media release on Thursday.
"There may be some GPs who might welcome the removal of that particular chalice of prescription."
"There will be many others who will recognise the potential for increased aggression and in some cases, violence, towards practitioners when patients feel that they cannot get what they need."
"Pain services around the country are already hard-pressed and would require significant additional resources, were this approach to be taken."
Rather than reducing access to opioids, Caldicott said the TGA should increase the access to medicinal cannabis.
He said that areas in the U.S. which had taken that step had seen opioid-related deaths decline by as much as 30 percent.
According to the ABS data, 40 percent of opioid overdoses occurred among people aged between 35 and 44 years old, followed by 25 to 34 and 45 to 54 groups, both of which were 27 percent.
