Frankston has among the highest rates of hospital admissions for alcohol, illicit drug and pharmaceutical abuse of any local government area in the state, new health figures show.
The area has the highest rate of alcohol-related hospital admissions in Victoria, the highest rate of pharmaceutical-related admissions of any metropolitan region and the third-highest rate of admissions for illicit substance abuse, according to Victorian Alcohol and Drug Association data.
A total of 1117 people were hospitalised because of alcohol in Frankston in 2012-13, compared with 314 for illicit drugs and 309 for prescription drugs.
But when it comes to emergency department presentations in Frankston, more people are showing up at hospital for pharmaceutical-related emergencies than for alcohol and illicit substance.
The municipality has a rate of 32.1 emergency department presentations per 10,000 for prescription drugs, the highest in the metropolitan region, ahead of adjacent area Mornington Peninsula with 22.2 and Wyndham with 14.9.
Peninsula Health drug service program manager Stephen Bright said Frankston’s higher rate of pharmaceutical-related presentations was likely due to “increasing social disadvantage” in the region and an ageing population.
He said older people, who were more likely to be prescribed a range of medications, made up a large proportion of emergency presentations, while younger people were actually under-represented among prescription drug emergencies.
But Mr Bright said Peninsula Health had developed a program to follow up on people who repeatedly end up in the hospital’s emergency department, which had reduced presentations.
The area’s drug culture has become a major local election issue, with the Frankston council calling on the government to address the “honey pot” of six pharmacies within 500 metres of each other that dispense opioid replacement therapies. The council is pushing for the methadone dispensaries to be moved to a dedicated hub at Frankston Hospital.
In a letter to Frankston candidates seen by Fairfax Media, the Victorian Drug and Alcohol Association noted a tenfold increase in emergency presentations for pharmaceuticals in Frankston over the past decade, from 37 to 422. Ambulance attendances from prescription drugs have almost doubled from 275 to 528 over the same period.
But the letter advises improving access to pharmacotherapy in the area by increasing the number of doctors and pharmacists prescribing and dispensing the medications. It also recommends a real-time prescription monitoring system be introduced to prevent prescription shopping.
Victorian Drug and Alcohol Association chief executive Sam Biondo said any attempts to dispense methadone from a less accessible location would shift the problem rather than solve it and make it difficult for people to access the opiate replacement, which could make individuals more likely to resort to illicit drugs.
“Complex problems require complex solutions,” he said. “There’s no magic bullet to solving some of these issues. We can’t solve it by moving it from one area to another, blaming them [drug users] and locking them up,”
A recent Fairfax Media analysis of police data showed violent crime and drug crime has surged in Frankston in the past five years, with the drug ice emerging as one of the factors driving the increase.
Drug offences more than doubled in the area that makes up the majority of the seat of Frankston in the five years to 2013-14, while violent crime spiked 30 per cent over the same period
The VAADA data shows the Frankston municipality also has the highest rate of alcohol-related family violence reports in the metropolitan region, with 37 reports for every 10,000 people.
This story first appeared in The Age
