The TGA has rejected a plan to make long-acting paracetamol a prescription-only drug, saying it could “disproportionately compromise the management of chronic pain”.

Despite an uptick in paracetamol overdoses, especially among children, the TGA has made an interim decision to merely reduce supermarket packs of immediate release (IR) paracetamol from 20 to 16 tablets and mandate blister packaging.

Large packs of IR paracetamol — those containing 33-100 tablets — would also become a pharmacist-only medicine, removing them from pharmacy shop floors, under the interim decision.

But proposals to ban children from buying paracetamol and make general sale paracetamol a behind-the-counter product, like cigarettes, were also knocked back.