Four Corners: Oxycodone abuse in Australia

Four Corners this week dealt with the topic of prescription drug addiction in Australia. As per usual with Four Corners, it was an interesting documentary and I recommend that you have a look. It will be available on iView for a couple of weeks at least.

The show included some alarming graphs showing a significant increase in the prescription of the synthetic opioid Oxycordone Hydrochloride in Australia over the last ten years. A pharmacist was quoted as saying that it is the most prescribed drug under the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS).

I was interested in having a look at what data is available for PBS use rates and drug abuse, as well as having a play with Tableau which is a great data visualisation product.

Interestingly from the data that I examined the rate of narcotics related deaths has dropped, despite a massive increase in Oxycodone prescriptions. Why do you think this might be?

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Data sources:

• PBS Stats
• ABS Causes of Death 2008

Notes:

I have been overly generous in assigning categories of death to Narcotics. If you know of more accurate public data, then let me know.