Experts say overprescription of painkillers behind heroin resurgence in Australia

ONE of the most dangerous illicit drugs is making a quiet and deadly comeback and experts say legal prescriptions may be to blame.

ONE of the most dangerous illicit drugs to hit our streets is making a quiet and deadly comeback — and experts say legal prescriptions may be to blame.

The Australian Drug Foundation says more Australians were becoming addicted to painkillers, with addicted “users” switching to cheap and accessible street drugs, such as heroin, when “doctor shopping” for prescription drugs failed.

Heroin, the deadly opioid that had Australia in the grip of a drug crisis in the late 1990s, is making a terrifying comeback, with rehabilitation services recording a surge in admissions of heroin addicts. An annual report from the National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre also indicated the frequency of heroin use was increasing nationally.

Drug experts say dependency on commonly prescribed painkillers like Endone is driving users to try street drugs like heroin.

The trend follows what’s being seen in the USA. More people died of drug overdoses last year in the United States than ever before, largely due to disturbing increases in prescription painkillers and heroin use, health authorities said Friday.

Australian health authorities, like the AMA, have previously acknowledged Australians are becoming hooked on prescription painkillers, dubbing overprescription of drugs like oxycodone a “national emergency”.

Now concerned health groups say the issue is likely linked to an even more disturbing drug development — heroin’s resurgence.

“We know that when people are dependent upon the prescription of opioid they can develop an addiction that goes beyond the pain management those drugs may have been originally prescribed for,” Australian Drug Foundation policy manager Geoff Munro told news.com.au.

“It is a trend we’re really concerned about because the overprescription of opioid leads to doctor shopping, people trying to get more drugs, and when that doesn’t work, then they turn to the streets and try and get another form of those drugs.”

Mr Munro said he believed a 13-fold increase in the prescription of oxycodone in the 1999-2008, as one example, was linked to an increased uptake in heroin use in the past 12 months.

“These drugs are prescribed for pain relief, but the problem is we’re not teaching people to manage pain without really powerful analgesics,” he said.

This heroin haul valued at AUD$64 million was seized by Australian Navy officers last week. Picture: HMAS Melbourne, ABIS Bonny Gassner/AAP

A report released this week by the US Center for Disease Control and Prevention also linked overprescription of prescription painkillers and heroin use, noting a 15-year rise in prescription killer deaths and a more recent surge in heroin use in overdose deaths were “two distinct but interrelated trends”.

Both drugs work in similar ways, and when addicts are unable to get prescription medications to feed their habit, many turn to heroin, which is often cheap and accessible, the report said.

Drugs like oxycodone and hydrocodone are the most commonly prescribed opioid pain relievers, and “continue to be involved in more overdose deaths than any other opioid type”, said the report, noting deaths from these types of drugs increased by nine per cent in one year, with 813 more deaths in 2014 than in 2013.

The overdose of two NRL players on oxycodone, a synthetic analgesic drug prescribed by doctors to manage acute, chronic and cancer-related pain, brought the prescription drugs crisis to public attention earlier this year.

According to a UNSW study on illicit drug trends between 2001 and 2013, more Australians are taking prescription drugs in non medical ways such as smoking or injecting them.