Pharmacies in Sheffield have raised awareness of codeine addiction by handing out support information to customers, an evaluation has found.

A quarter of pharmacies reported positive feedback from a month-long campaign to hand out discreet information cards with codeine purchases, revealed an evaluation of the project published on February 19.

The project involved Sheffield's Drugs and Alcohol Co-ordination Team providing the area's 127 pharmacies with cards that gave details of who to contact for a confidential discussion about codeine use. The pharmacies placed the cards in bags of over-the-counter (OTC) codeine purchases last November, and staff were not required to speak to the patient about the issue.

People who presented for codeine more often than they should were among those that the initiative targeted, said James Wood, pharmacist at Wicker Pharmacy, Sheffield	More pharmacy public health initiatives Month-long eyecare campaign achieves nearly 2,000 MURs Pharmacy spots high blood pressure in pub health checks Public Health England urges smokers to seek help to quit from pharmacists
	A survey of 25 of the participating pharmacies found that six had received positive feedback from people who were either previously unaware of codeine addiction or knew someone who would find the support useful. One pharmacy reported that an addicted patient subsequently weaned themselves off codeine.

Only four pharmacies received negative comments about the campaign, which mostly came from people who felt "picked on" and thought the information suggested they were misusing codeine.

Prior to running the campaign, 84 per cent of the surveyed pharmacies said they had concerns about codeine use. One pharmacy said they had customers who attempted to buy codeine every week and another reported customers requesting the drug from a variety of different pharmacies.

Although there were no known referrals from the information, the evaluation pointed out that it was not possible to collect information from GP practices. Two pharmacies said the campaign had actively helped them deal with codeine misuse and one pharmacy called for large posters on codeine addiction to be on display throughout the year to highlight the issue.

All 25 of the pharmacies said they would run a similar campaign again and 24 felt it was easy to implement. The evaluation recommended that the campaign should run again if possible and called for display materials to be made available to pharmacies all year round.

The initiative had run as a pilot in healthy living pharmacies in March 2012, when three people contacted treatment services about OTC codeine addiction.

James Wood, pharmacist at participant Wicker Pharmacy, Sheffield, said the campaign had successfully encouraged conversation and information-sharing at his pharmacy.

"We knew that [codeine addiction] was a problem for some people and we wanted to help them, rather than turning them away," he told C+D. "[Those who benefit] might be the kind of people who counter staff have identified as presenting more often than they should be, or perhaps some of the information they give you during the consultation might alert you to the [problem]."