Hooked on oxy: How pilfered Canadian pills are fuelling a U.S. health crisis

July 14, 2014 – Anna Mehler Paperny, Global News

Nineteen thousand, two hundred and thirty-seven tablets.

That’s how many pills an Ontario pharmacy employee was able to steal before being caught in February – by far the biggest oxycodone theft reported from a Canadian hospital or pharmacy since January 2012, according to numbers Health Canada gave Global News.

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Ontario has no plans to crack down on skyrocketing painkillers

 

July 14, 2014 – Anna Mehler Paperny, Global News

Canada’s next painkiller crackdown won’t come from Ontario.

Its removal of OxyNEO from the Ontario Drug Benefit successfully sidelined Purdue’s replacement for what was once the most notoriously addictive opioid – OxyContin.

And the province now collects data on all prescriptions filled, not just those the government pays for.

But tackling Canada’s fastest-growing addiction is turning into a game of whack-a-mole: Prescriptions for just about every other potent painkiller are up – way up – in the past two years.

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Enbridge’s Northern Gateway: Now things get interesting

ngprotest

June 17, 2014 – Anna Mehler Paperny, Global News

The federal government’s approval of Enbridge’s Northern Gateway pipelineis somewhat anticlimactic: It’s been expected since a Joint Review Panel gave the project a green light (with 209 conditions) late last year.

But now the gloves come off: A quintet of lawsuits seeking to overturn that review panel decision, put on hold in light of Ottawa’s pending decision, is poised to recommence, likely amid more litigation taking issue with the decision itself.

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Ottawa considers closing some prison psychiatric beds: Watchdog

June 2, 2014 – Anna Mehler Paperny, Global News

Ottawa is considering closing psychiatric beds in federal prisons barely a month after announcing a new strategy on inmates with mental illness, the federal prison watchdog says.

At the same time, it has cut back on nursing hours, even as federal prisons are seeing more assaults, more injuries and more use of force – medical incidents that corrections officers, even ones trained in first aid, aren’t prepared to handle.

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Ontario election 2014: Full Q&A with NDP leader Andrea Horwath

Photo by Anna Mehler Paperny

Photo by Anna Mehler Paperny

May 20, 2014 – Anna Mehler Paperny, Global News

If there’s one thing Andrea Horwath’s good at, it’s people – meeting them, engaging with them, glad-handing as though it were a normal thing to do and not weird political pantomime. So even at a staged food court photo-op at the Malvern Town Centre in northeast Toronto, she conversed with patrons seated around her as though they were all there by happy accident, without a bank of cameras and smartphones recording her every word.

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