Accidental fatal overdoses in Australia continue to be driven by the use of opioids, according to the country's annual overdose report. But it's the increased use of anti-anxiety medication in combination with other drugs that's causing concern.
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00:00 This year's snapshot of drug overdoses produced by the Pennington Institute makes for some
00:06 difficult reading.
00:07 It's found that in the 20 years since 2001, over 37,000 Australians have lost their lives
00:14 to drugs.
00:15 That's one person every four hours and most of those are accidental.
00:20 During that period, the number of unintentional drug-induced deaths has increased by more
00:25 than 70%.
00:27 Despite Australia's population growing by just 33%.
00:31 Indigenous Australians are over-represented in overdose deaths.
00:34 20 per 100,000 compared to just under 6 per 100,000 for non-indigenous people.
00:41 Interestingly it's a worse problem in regional and rural areas, but it affects people from
00:47 all walks of life, including from the richest to the poorest.
00:50 It really is a tragedy.
00:52 It's far exceeded the road toll now since 2014 and yet we're not giving it the attention
00:57 that it deserves.
00:59 Deaths from anti-anxiety prescription medication are also on the rise.
01:03 In 2021, benzodiazepines were the second most common cause of unintentional drug-induced
01:08 deaths behind opioids.
01:10 While the actual cause of death is often a combination of drugs, the proportion of accidental
01:15 overdose deaths involving benzodiazepine has grown in the past two decades.
01:21 And there are similar rises for stimulants, anti-convulsants and anti-psychotics.
01:26 We've got a very significant overdose problem now with stimulant drugs, methamphetamine
01:32 and cocaine, but also still with anti-anxiety drugs and sleeping drugs prescribed by doctors.
01:38 The Pennington Institute says we only need to look to America and Canada for an example
01:43 of the catastrophic impact of synthetic opioids.
01:47 It wants health authorities here to start making plans.
01:50 We've certainly seen in the US the rise of fentanyl and we've seen fentanyl increase
01:54 in Australia but not anywhere near the scale of what's been happening in the United States.
01:59 That's a real danger for us and we should be preparing for the possibility that fentanyl
02:05 comes to Australia.
02:06 [BLANK_AUDIO]