The Pharmacy Guild is continuing its fight to keep providing over-the-counter codeine-containing analgesics, shifting focus to lobby for a special circumstances exemption that will allow pharmacists to supply the medicines to patients for temporary pain relief.

While codeine-containing products will be up-scheduled to prescription-only on February 1 next year, the Guild wants to see the introduction of a prescription ‘except when’ scheduling model, which will be supported by its existing MedsASSIST real-time monitoring system.