Opioid crisis: we don’t really know why we haven’t seen fentanyl emerge in Australia – and we don’t know that it won’t

Cosmos Magazine

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Opioids have caused immeasurable harm the world over, writes Clare Watson at Cosmos Weekly.

Pushed by pharmaceutical companies, prescribed by doctors and taken by patients needing pain relief, opioid drugs have ensnared countless people in the traps of addiction – none more so than in the United States and Canada, where opioid deaths have soared in waves over three successive decades.

In 2016, the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare reported legal or pharmaceutical opioids (including codeine and oxycodone) are responsible for far more deaths and poisoning hospitalisations than illegal opioids (such as heroin). Every day in Australia, nearly 150 hospitalisations and 14 emergency department (ED) presentations involve opioid harm, and three people die from drug-induced deaths involving opioid use.

Australia has introduced a raft of policy changes to restrict the supply of opioid medications and reduce harm, but finds itself in a precarious position: possibly on a different path to that of North America, but still teetering on the edge of an escalating opioid addiction problem.

In Australia, opioid deaths are increasing and experts say countless pain patients are unable to access proper treatment for ‘opioid use disorder’ – a physiological and a psychological dependence on prescription opioids – let alone their chronic pain, which could be managed in other ways, if non-pharmacological pain treatments were affordable.

“We really want a middle course that uses opioids appropriately for acute, severe conditions and tends not to use them for chronic pain.”

–Dr Hester Wilson


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