February 10, 2017 – Anna Mehler Paperny, Reuters
A leading drugmaker ramped up its lobbying in Canada fivefold last year, urging government officials to enact a rule that would give it an effective monopoly on long-acting narcotic painkillers.
January 23, 2017 – Anna Mehler Paperny, Reuters
As deaths from powerful painkillers continue to rise, Canada is pursuing unprecedented measures to curb their use, including requiring cigarette-style warning stickers on every prescription, Health Minister Jane Philpott told Reuters.
April 4, 2016 – Anna Mehler Paperny, Global News
Health Canada has decided not to require controlled-release opioid painkillers to be tamper-resistant, saying that measure wouldn’t help Canada’s fastest-growing drug problem, which kills hundreds of people across the country each year.
April 4, 2016 – Anna Mehler Paperny, Global News
Half the doctors prescribing fentanyl in Manitoba aren’t following safety guidelines for the potent opioid, which is 100 times more powerful than morphine. And researchers say other provinces are likely as bad, if not worse.
August 20, 2015 – Anna Mehler Paperny, Global News
Patients put on high doses of opioids are 24 times more likely to die because of them than people prescribed lower doses of the drugs, a new study finds.
August 12, 2015 – Anna Mehler Paperny, Global News
It’s easier for Sue to buy Oxy on the street than to get treatment for the addiction that took over her life.
August 11, 2015 – Anna Mehler Paperny, Global News
The Prince Albert methadone clinic where Lanre Egbeyemi worked has about 400 patients. He figures there are 10 times that many people who need treatment for crippling addictions to a host of potent opioids — and aren’t getting it.
August 10, 2015 – Anna Mehler Paperny, Global News
David Juurlink sees them daily — old and young, with strokes or pneumonia or broken bones or drug-related overdoses, accidents, constipation.
Their ailments and backgrounds and health conditions run the gamut. And they’re all on high doses of a drug five times more powerful than morphine.
November 13, 2014 – Anna Mehler Paperny, Global News
Ontario needs to rethink the way it treats addiction and pain if it wants to tackle a worsening prescription opioid health crisis, critics say.
Preliminary figures obtained by Global News indicate opioids are killing more Ontarians than ever before – and the province has no plan to shift away from its one-drug crackdown even as the opioid crisis shifts to such less-notorious drugs as Fentanyl and Hydromorph Contin.
November 9, 2014 – Anna Mehler Paperny, Global News
Ontario’s opioid epidemic is more deadly than ever, new numbers obtained by Global News indicate. And the province hasn’t shifted its tactics to deal with the evolving health crisis killing more than 500 Ontarians a year.
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