Calls for more research on impact of prescription medication and road accidents

Just over three million people take prescription drugs annually. Around 1.5 million people every year are prescribed opioids or about half the population at some time over a decade.

The amount of people using opioids has gone up six fold in the last two decades while the number of people on antidepressants has doubled, according to the British Journal of Clinical Pharmacology.

In 2021 a coroner found the driver responsible for killing four members of the Falkholt family in 2017, including Home and Away star Jessica Falkholt, had potentially fatal levels of prescription medication in his system.

Counsel Assisting the Coroner Donna Ward said a post mortem found Craig Whitall had a cocktail of drugs including methylamphetamine - or 'ice' - methadone, diazepam and antidepressants in his system after his death.

But despite the rise in prescription drug use police do not test for this during road side testing.

A Transport for NSW spokesperson said Mobile Drug Testing (MDT) only detects the presence of four illegal drugs: ecstasy, cannabis, cocaine, and methamphetamine (including speed and ice) commonly identified in fatal crash data.

Opioids are not on the list because they are prescribed for pain management.

"Prescription opioids can affect the skills required for safe driving and increase crash risk" the spokesperson said.

"However, the national medical standards for assessing fitness to drive advise that people on stable doses of opioid analgesics may not have a higher risk of a crash than the general population, providing they are not abusing other impairing drugs."

University of Sydney professor of clinical pharmacology Nicholas Buckley said opioid use "increases your risk of traffic accidents".

"The increased risk with opioids is about double, increased risk with sleeping tablets is even higher, maybe double that again, there are also risks for antidepressants," he said.

"Most drugs that act on the brain will increase your risk of drowsiness, impair concentration or coordination, all of those give you an increased risk of traffic crashes."

Professor Buckley said the only "current mechanism of dealing with the risk" were warnings on the box urging people not to drive if they felt affected by the drug.

He called for more research into the impact of prescription medication on road accidents.

"We have no recent Australian research," he said.

"We don't know how big a problem this is when it comes to current medicines with such warnings in the Australian setting, is there a widespread problem or just a few people doing the wrong thing?".

NSW Police and NSW roads minister John Graham declined to comment.