The Australian Medical Association has accused the WA health minister of backflipping on his promise to support prescription-only access to codeine products.
Roger Cook has co-signed a letter with other state health ministers, excluding South Australia, urging federal health minister Greg Hunt to reverse a decision by the Therapeutic Goods Administration to halt the over-the-counter sale of codeine from February 2018.
A report by the National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre in July found the number of accidental deaths from opioid-related overdoses had doubled among Australians aged 35 to 44 since 2007, with more than two-thirds due to pharmaceutical opioids rather than heroin.
AMA WA president Omar Khorshid said he was "extremely disappointed" the minister had backflipped on the issue and accused him of "cravenly" supporting the Pharmacy Guild.
"The minister has been drawn into a poor political decision that he will regret when it inevitably leads to the death of West Australians," he said.
Mr Cook agreed with the AMA that the laws needed to be tightened but said there may be circumstances when flexibility was required.
"It's important as the minister for health I take all views on board," he told reporters on Wednesday.
He said one issue pharmacists were looking at was a live system monitoring prescriptions to help control the abuse of opioid-type drugs and encouraged the AMA to consider the view of all stakeholders.
Pharmacies currently operate a voluntary monitoring system for people on prescriptions for opioid painkillers.
Pharmacy Guild WA president Stephen Wragg said it agreed codeine should be rescheduled as a prescription only drug for chronic pain.
"What we're proposing is an 'except when' so that the 90 per cent of West Australian's who use codeine for short-term pain, for less than three days, can still access the painkiller," he said.
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