The Illicit Drug Reporting System (IDRS) is a national drug monitoring system intended to identify emerging trends of local and national concern in illicit drug markets, and form part of Drug Trends.

The Real Time Prescription Monitoring (RTPM) system known as SafeScript was introduced in Victoria in 2019. It is a tool that provides prescribers and pharmacists access to a patient's prescription history for high-risk medicines to reduce the possibility of people being dispensed these medicines multiple times from multiple providers.

In this bulletin, we examine prescription refusal in the 2021 Melbourne IDRS sample, examining the characteristics of those who were refused a prescription compared to those who were not.