THE Pharmacy Guild of Australia is calling on Federal Treasurer, Jim Chalmers, to allocate $348 million in his Oct Budget to support a revamp of opioid replacement treatment programs (ORT).
Guild National President, Trent Twomey, told delegates at Mon night's Pharmacy Industry Roadshow in Sydney, that the current ORT model made no sense.
"I do ORT in one of my pharmacies - I don't do it in all of them, but it's cheaper to get hooked on drugs in Australia than it is to get off them," he said.
"It makes absolutely no sense that we pay for someone to get hooked on OxyContin at $6 a packet, but they have to pay $35 a week to get off it.
"There is something fundamentally wrong with the design of policy in Australia, and the solution, dear Government, is not to make community pharmacists in Australia police people and have to monitor it with real-time prescription monitoring."
The Guild's call for the Federal Government to fund a national Opioid Dependence Treatment Program, came as the Penington Institute released Australia's Annual Overdose Report 2022, which revealed opioids were the most common drug group associated with unintentional drug-induced deaths (PD 02 Sep).
Meanwhile Victorian Legislative Council member, Fiona Patten, has called on the State Government to provide financial incentives and subsidies to encourage more community pharmacies to participate in ORT.
"The prescription of methadone and buprenorphine has been proven to reduce health, social and economic harms caused by dependence on either illicit or licit opioids, most importantly reducing illness and deaths and helping people to stabilise and lead more productive lives," she said.
"But these programs only work when pharmacies participate, so it is vitally important that we encourage pharmacies to provide ORT right across the state."
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