The Times: Rise of the over-the-counter opioid addicts

Description

Excerpt: Codeine sounds harmless enough. You can buy the painkiller without prescription in any British chemist. Yet codeine is an opioid drug that our livers turn into morphine — the basis of heroin. Experts warn that you can become addicted to codeine within a fortnight.

Now a vast increase in UK codeine use is fuelling fears of a national opioid-addiction crisis. Investigators at Manchester University warn that powerful-strength prescriptions for codeine have jumped fivefold in a decade.

Last week they reported in the journal PLOS Medicine how GPs’ prescriptions have shot up from 484 per 10,000 in 2006, to 2,456 per 10,000 in 2017...