Victoria’s health department was forced to overhaul its medical policies after it gave a doctor the green light to prescribe staggering amounts of opioid painkillers to a man who later died of an overdose.

As the Morrison government moves to tackle opioid deaths in Australia, coronial records have raised questions about the role of state health departments in authorising prescriptions for some of the most addictive legal drugs available.

OxyContin is the powerful painkiller at the centre of the US opioid crisis. Credit:Justin McManus JZM

The Age can reveal that in one case, the Victorian health department ignored medical guidelines and gave a doctor three separate permits to provide increasingly higher doses of oxycodone to treat a patient’s “intermittent migraines”.

Oxycodone, which trades under brand names such as OxyContin or Endone, is the drug at the centre of the US opioid epidemic, and multiple medical studies have warned it should not be used to treat migraines.