Shaping and delivering services in primary care: benzodiazepine and opiate withdrawal service

Evidence collected by Public Health England (PHE) shows an increase in the use of over-the-counter codeine medicines (PHE, 2014a). It is also increasingly recognised by health professionals, that opioid medications used to treat pain become less effective over time. Doses can be increased to high levels and this usually does not work and can create a dependency on opioid medication in the long run, particularly codeine-based medications (PHE, 2014a; 2019; British Pain Society, 2020).

In the US, the prescribing and the illicit drugs trade in opioid painkillers has led to an increase in mortality figures (National Institute on Drug Abuse, 2021). The government has called the situation at present a national crisis as 130 people die every day from opioid-related drug overdoses. In the UK there is evidence that opioid analgesic prescribing has increased in the last decade, with a doubling of mortality figures (Office for National Statistics, 2019).