Federal Health data has shown that the Wagga region, which includes Wagga Local Government Area and areas between Temora and Lockhart, saw opioid prescriptions filled at rate of 68,355 scripts for every 100,000 residents during 2020.

Wagga's usage rate for opioids was higher than most Sydney suburbs and significantly above the NSW average for 2020, which was 46,891 prescriptions per 100,000 residents.

The prescriptions were legal and supported under the federal Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme, but did provide medications that are illegal if taken in a non-prescribed manner or by a non-prescribed person.

Calvary Riverina Drug and Alcohol Centre manager Brendan McCorry said the regions across Australia were seeing a rise in opioid abuse.

"We're kind of following along on the American trend where there has been a rise in the number of prescriptions for pain management," he said.

"[Wagga has] a large number of prescriptions but it includes prescription for people being treated with methadone and people who were originally addicted to opioids and are being treated with drugs such as Buprenorphine.

"Some of it is for drug treatment and others are for medical treatments."

The city's most prescribed opioid was the various forms of oxycodone, usually prescribed to relieve moderate to severe pain, which totalled 24,049 scripts last year.

Paracetamol and Codeine came in second with 15,364 scripts, followed by Buprenorphine, which is used to treat opioid dependence, with 6976 scripts.

Mr McCorry said some people can develop issues with painkillers after taking them for legitimate reasons, rather than trying to abuse prescriptions as an alternative to other illicit drugs.

"Originally people would have been prescribed the medication to treat a genuine pain issue, but some of the drugs are highly addictive and some people do quickly develop a dependence on them," he said.

"It's a growing issue. There's no pain management clinic for people to attend to learn alternative ways of managing their pain, so often medication is one of the only effective methods they have.

"As with all opioids, you develop a tolerance over time so you need more and more of the drug to get the same relief from the pain."

Fentanyl, a high-powered painkiller used after surgeries or during major trauma and cancer treatment that can cause fatal overdoses when abused, was prescribed 2516 times in 2020.

A region including Snowy Valleys Local Government Area had the fourth highest rate of opioid prescriptions in NSW.

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