There has been increasing pressure on Canada from the U.S. to align their rules on prescription narcotics to help alleviate the abuse and the eventual trickle effect of contraband drugs making their way across the border.
Health Canada recently released a notice of intent to change parameters for not only the highly addictive OxyContin but for all prescription narcotics. This change would make Canada’s one of the strictest anti-abuse systems in the world and great leap in the right direction.
Last year, the U.S. banned a particular form of OxyContin and is still finding it in more than 10 different states. This data comes from a drug-abuse researcher who collects data from a crowdsourcing website where users plugin particulars on the drugs they’ve purchased.
The recent stir of information on opioid abuse comes along with at study recently published in Monday’s edition of the journal Addiction. Researchers revealed a 242% increase in deaths related to opioid abuse in young adults ages 24-35 over a 20 year span. (More details in this related post)
We remain professionally disappointed with drug manufacturers who continue to produce a drug killing what is now 1 in 8 young Ontario residents and is also a lethal contraband substance in the United States. Ontario deserves to be recognized as a centre of excellence for patient care and ethical pracitce, and not as the source for this type of obviously avoidable controversy. We look forward to the outcomes of the proposal being put forth by Health Canada.
