Australians now need to visit a doctor to obtain codeine after the drug was taken off pharmacy shelves and made available only with a prescription.
Mr Hunt's claim doesn't stack up. There has not been any recent data to suggest that 100 Australians are dying every year from over-the-counter codeine products. The latest available data was published in a 2015 study covering 2000 to 2013, which showed that on average about 100 Australians were dying a year from all codeine products, both over-the-counter and prescription. Mr Hunt's claim comes from a Therapeutic Goods Administration estimate, which is based on an assumption that an increasing death rate seen in the early years of that research would have continued in the time since then. This is not accepted by experts consulted by Fact Check. In any case the study was unable to determine the source of the codeine involved in 60 per cent of the deaths. In the 40 per cent where the source could be determined, over-the-counter products were involved in 40 per cent of cases. That means over-the-counter codeine was only conclusively found in 16 per cent of all the deaths reported in the study, or 16 per year on average. It appears that Mr Hunt and the Therapeutic Goods Administration have used the study's findings to assume that over-the-counter products were involved in 40 per cent of all codeine-related deaths. However, the authors of the study cautioned against that, saying that an absence of data "limits inferences about the source of codeine". In the lead-up to the decision to make codeine prescription-only, the Therapeutic Goods Administration commissioned an economic model from KPMG. KPMG used the data from the 2015 study to arrive at an assumption that there could currently be 30 deaths per year from over-the-counter codeine. The 2015 study also pointed out that making codeine available only on prescription would not prevent all the deaths attributable to over-the-counter codeine. Using the reasons given in the study, KPMG's model assumed that five lives a year would be saved by the move, which it described as a conservative number suitable for assessing the costs and benefits of banning over-the-counter sales. While there is evidence of an overall increase in misuse and harm relating to codeine products, the available research does not support Mr Hunt's claim that 100 lives a year could be saved by making codeine available only on prescription.
Fact check: Will the move to make codeine prescription-only save 100 lives a year?
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