prescription-drug abuse

Inquest into Brockville’s fatal overdoses lays bare the toll of prescription-drug addiction

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Hilda Bertrand stands outside the Brockville train station on Monday, June 27, 2011. Her daughter, Donna Bertrand, died of an overdose Dec. 2, 2008 -- days after 19-year-old Dustin King died of an OxyContin overdose in her apartment. An inquest into their deaths was ongoing June 2011 and heard closing arguments Wednesday, June 29, 2011.
(Photo by Anna Mehler Paperny/The Globe and Mail)

Saturday, July 2, 2011 – Globe and Mail
ANNA MEHLER PAPERNY

BROCKVILLE, ONT. — Day after day for weeks on end, Hilda Bertrand and Brenda Toupin-Wiles sat in a Brockville, Ont., courtroom and listened to strangers dissect their children’s deaths.

The inquest into the fatal 2008 overdoses of Ms. Bertrand’s 41-year-old daughter and Ms. Toupin-Wiles’s 19-year-old son has given both families a crash course in pharmacology and prescription-drug abuse.

“It’s been educational. And disturbing,” Ms. Toupin-Wiles said. “I’ve been educated on how to crush, smoke, snort, inject every kind of drug you can imagine.”

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Overdose inquest: Brockville deaths put focus on prescription-drug abuse

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Dustin King was 19 when he died after snorting half an 80-milligram OxyContin tablet in Donna Bertrand's apartment. Ms. Bertrand, 41, died of an overdose in the same apartment days later.

Tuesday, May 31, 2011 – Globe and Mail
ANNA MEHLER PAPERNY

She was a 48-year-old mother and former nurse, receiving disability payments for back pain.

He was a fearless 19-year-old known for befriending everyone, who bounced from high school to temp jobs, from one couch to another when he and his dad argued.

They died days apart, in the same apartment, overdosed on drugs.

She had prescriptions – for the OxyContin toxicologists say caused his death, and the cocktail of antidepressants and sedatives they say precipitated hers.

He did not.

An inquest starting in Brockville this week into the 2008 deaths of Donna Bertrand and Dustin King will try to piece together not how they died so much as how to prevent deaths like theirs.

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