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.
July 25, 2014 – Anna Mehler Paperny, Global News
Health Canada wants ideas on how to stop risky prescribing of the drugs fuelling Canada’s fastest-growing addictions.
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.
Michelle Siu for the Globe and Mail
Saturday, July 7, 2012 – Globe and Mail
ANNA MEHLER PAPERNY
Ontario is “strongly urging” the federal government not to let generic brands of the popular painkiller OxyContin into Canada once Purdue Pharmaceuticals’ patent runs out this fall.
The expiration of Purdue’s OxyContin patent on Nov. 25 opens the door for other companies to manufacture cheaper generic versions of the controlled-release oxycodone. Purdue will continue to make a new, tamper-resistant patented drug – OxyNEO – introduced to replace OxyContin earlier this year.
Photo by Michelle Siu for the Globe and Mail
Tuesday, March 6, 2012 – Globe and Mail
ANNA MEHLER PAPERNY
A Northern Ontario coroner says the province’s doctors and pharmacists need to take extra care in switching patients from OxyContin to other opioids, following the death of a man whose doctor changed his prescription and gave him an incorrect dose.
Tuesday, December 8, 2009 – Globe and Mail
ANNA MEHLER PAPERNY
Painkillers are causing twice the number of overdose deaths they were two decades ago, a new study has revealed. And most of those who died obtained the medications through a doctor’s prescription and had seen a physician within the last month of their life.
The increase mirrors a dramatic rise in prescriptions for oxycodone. The potent opiate, found in OxyContin and Percocet, has proliferated in an epidemic of chronic pain turning Canadians into a nation of pill-poppers – using more prescription opioids per capita than any country but the United States and Belgium.
It’s an indication that many doctors have underestimated the power and complexity of prescription opioids, and their ability to harm as well as help, said Irfan Dhalla, a doctor at St. Michael’s Hospital in Toronto and the report’s primary author.
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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