Month: November 2009

Ontario cracking down on prescription pill abuse

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Friday, November 20, 2009 – Globe and Mail

ANNA MEHLER PAPERNY

In the face of Canada’s growing pill problem, Ontario is moving to change the way opioids are prescribed and monitored.

New regulations to be put in place in the coming months would crack down on prescription abuse and set new benchmarks for how these pills should be doled out in an attempt to deal with the growing numbers of people getting hooked on painkillers across the country.

Addiction experts say the changes are badly needed and should have come a decade ago.

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Canada, you need an intervention

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Saturday, November 14, 2009 – Globe and Mail
ANNA MEHLER PAPERNY

Janey Nagle wasn’t looking for kicks when she began courting a drug habit. The Percocets her doctor prescribed were the only thing that could take away the excruciating pain that lingered a decade after a car accident threw her into a windshield with such force that her face left an imprint in the glass.

For the first two years, the painkillers did the trick. The Perth, Ont., mother of four was able to work and look after her family. But after a while she couldn’t get through the day without the pills’ euphoric effect, and that demanded higher and higher doses.

Fearful her doctor would cut her off, Ms. Nagle looked elsewhere. She spent hundreds of dollars a day on prescription drugs bought off the street, primarily from friends and acquaintances. She photocopied her prescriptions and filled each one repeatedly at pharmacies around Perth, Kingston and Smiths Falls.

“It was a horrible, panicked feeling every morning when I woke up,” says Ms. Nagle, now 43. She remembers the daily dilemma: “How am I going to get them? Where am I going to get the money?”

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Private-clinic patients jump the line for flu shot

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Monday, November 2, 2009 – Globe and Mail
KAREN HOWLETT, ANNA MEHLER PAPERNY AND DAWN WALTON

TORONTO and CALGARY — Patients at private medical clinics in at least two provinces have jumped the queue for H1N1 vaccine during a nationwide shortage of the flu shot, rekindling a debate about the perils of two-tier health care in Canada.

Copeman Healthcare, a private clinic in Vancouver that charges patients annual membership fees of $3,900 in the first year, has already received its first shipment of H1N1 vaccine and is hoping for more soon, said chief operating officer Chris Nedelmann.

Medcan, a clinic in downtown Toronto that charges just under $2,000 for a head-to-toe checkup, received 3,000 doses last Friday, enough for 8 per cent of its patients.

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