Many prescription drugs are readily available to Australians to ward off, cure or treat diseases and ailments.
But new data shows the number of people misusing powerful prescription drugs is growing.
The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare's latest snapshot shows more people are using pharmaceuticals for non-medical reasons than those using illegal drugs.
In 2007, 3.7 per cent of Australians older than 14 misused prescription pills.
That number grew to 4.8 per cent last year, or about 1 million people.
The Institute's spokesman Matthew James says it's unclear what is driving the rise.
"Some of it at least is related to the aging population and the genuine need for pain management and relief and there's a proportion of people who when they start taking these medicines become addicted or they will start to misuse them in some extent."
The data also shows more than 2000 Australians died from misusing drugs last year, with the most common being from benzodiazepenes, or tranquilisers such as sleeping pills and anxiety pills.
More than 500 people died from opioids such as painkillers.
Matthew James says while most of the deaths were related to prescription drugs, the most commonly misused drugs were over the counter medications like codeine.
"Sometimes people can become addicted to codeine products they might be using them to get a high or to enhance the experience of using other drugs. "
Pharmacist Rick Samimi says the data is not surprising.
He says pharmacists have long been calling for a system to monitor in real-time the prescription and dispensation of medications.
"There is anecdotal evidence by most pharmacists and doctor's surgery that there are people who are at risk and they are potentially misusing these medications or they're dependent on them and they're abusing them. Real time monitoring allows cooperation between pharmacists and doctors in terms of being able to identify these patients to try to prevent the misuse and abuse or patients who are dependent on these mediations try to have pathways to help them their dependency. "
The report also showed Indigenous Australians were more than twice as likely to have recently used a pharmaceutical for non-medical purposes than non-Indigenous Australians.
People living in remote areas were almost twice as likely as those living in major cities to have recently used a pharmaceutical for non-medical purposes.
Rick Samimi says that could be in part because of a lack of resources.
"In regional and remote areas the issue is that the less availability of pharmacists and doctors to intervene and assist these patients the more likelihood of dependency and abuse to happen. "
