Patients are still being prescribed hundreds of Xanax tablets a year despite a cut in government subsidies.

Reports of anxiety drug poisonings have also remained relatively stable, suggesting more people were turning to private prescriptions, a report published in JAMA Network Open on Thursday said.

Patients are still being prescribed hundreds of Xanax tablets a year. Credit:Jennifer Soo

In 2017, the government made changes to the public subsidy of Xanax through the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS) in an effort to limit its misuse. The large two-milligram tablet was removed from the subsidy, packet sizes were reduced from 50 to 10 tablets and refills were removed so new prescriptions were required.

Researchers at UNSW's Centre for Big Data Research in Health found there was a substantial reduction of 51.2 per cent in the number people being dispensed subsidised Xanax, but lead author Andrea Schaffer cautioned that did not tell the whole story.