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.
Anna Mehler Paperny, Global News
Purdue Pharmaceuticals markets a long-acting, non-tamper resistant opioid in Canada but argues that another long-acting, non-tamper resistant opioid in the U.S. is too dangerous to approve.
In an 80-page submission to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration last July – quoting Ontario Health Minister Deb Matthews, among several others – Purdue argued that allowing generic versions of OxyContin on the market without tamper-proofing mechanisms “would have a number of detrimental effects and would be flatly inconsistent with the Agency’s mission to promote and protect the public health.”
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.
Photo by Michelle Siu for the Globe and Mail
Saturday, February 18, 2012 – Globe and Mail
ANNA MEHLER PAPERNY
The epicentres of Canada’s prescription pill problem have said they’ll only pay for the leading brand of potent painkillers under special circumstances – one of the most dramatic steps taken in years to tackle the country’s fastest-growing addiction.
Purdue Pharmaceuticals, which manufactures OxyContin, is replacing it with a drug that’s supposed to be less prone to abuse. But some provinces have decided that’s not good enough.
Photo by Michelle Siu for the Globe and Mail
KIM MACKRAEL AND ANNA MEHLER PAPERNY
Tuesday, July 05, 2011 – Globe and Mail
Ontario should overhaul its system for prescribing, monitoring and treating patients using prescription opioids, an inquest into two fatal drug overdoses in Brockville has recommended.
The inquest into the 2008 deaths of 41-year-old Donna Bertrand and 19-year-old Dustin King delivered 48 wide-ranging recommendations Tuesday, including mandatory education and auditing of doctors and better systems for monitoring who can access pills.
Mr. King and Ms. Bertrand were found dead in the same apartment within days of each other. He died Nov. 21, 2008, of an OxyContin overdose, passed out on Ms. Bertrand’s couch, where he lay for hours before people in the downtown Brockville apartment noticed something was wrong.
She died 11 days later after ingesting a fatal mix of sedatives and antidepressants.
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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