THE Pharmacy Guild has blasted the Australian Medical Association's response to the Guild campaign on codeine rescheduling (PD yesterday) as a "disappointing misrepresentation of the Guild's approach".
AMA president Michael Gannon asserted that "pharmacist control of codeine does not work," with the Guild saying this is "offensive and hypocritical in view of the stack of coroners' reports on opioid related deaths due to doctor shopping".
The war of words continued, with the Guild posing the question to the AMA of whether there would be a real-time monitoring system in place by the time the codeine medicines are upscheduled.
"Community pharmacy voluntarily put a real-time system - MedsASSIST - in place last year for over-the-counter codeine pain relief medicine. What is the AMA doing?" the Guild asked.
President George Tambassis said the Guild would "continue to press for a common sense exception to codeine up-scheduling so that patients can continue to access these medicines for the temporary relief of acute pain from their pharmacist in accordance with a strict protocol, which would include the mandatory use of real time recording".
He said in contrast to the AMA's assertions, the Guild wasn't seeking to reverse the TGA decision in relation to codeine up-scheduling.
"However up-scheduling alone will not address issues of addiction and could actually exacerbate them [given] the likelihood that some patients will be prescribed higher strength codeine containing products," Tambassis warned.
He suggested it was time for the AMA "to put common sense and patients before tired old turf wars".
MEANWHILE Pharmaceutical Society president Shane Jackson said PSA did not believe the up-scheduling would fix pain problems in the community, describing it as "a blunt approach to address the over-use of opioids in Australia.
"Community pharmacists have the skills, knowledge and expertise to expertly advise patients on the effective and safe use of OTC analgesics for the treatment of acute, short-term pain," he said.
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