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.
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.
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.
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.
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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