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Bringing about a higher level of transparency and accountability in provincial and federal governments to help protect taxpayers from abuse

Bringing about a higher level of transparency and accountability in provincial and federal governments to help protect taxpayers from abuse.

Big Business Starting to Look at Canada’s Newest Industry

Twenty years ago, it was vilified as a ‘gateway drug’. Now, cannabis has grown into a big business, with the potential to become even bigger as laws are scheduled to change to reflect shifting social attitudes towards marijuana and investment picks up to take advantage of increased demand.

And make no mistake: the demand is huge. In the United States, the legal cannabis industry is worth $6.7 billion, according to Bloomberg. Actively watching the industry include: Altria Group (NYSE: MO), Insys Therapeutics (NASDAQ: INSY), GW Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: GWPH), Teva Pharmaceuticals (NYSE: TEVA), MedReleaf Corp (OTC: MEDFF) (TSX: LEAF.TO)

Read more at PR Newswire

Psychiatrist pleads guilty in fraud case at state psychiatric center

TOWN OF MARCY — A psychiatrist at the New York State Psychiatric Center has been fired after law enforcement officials said he lied about treating inmate patients.

While working as a psychiatrist, Morales D. Brown, 59, of Deerfield, lied about evaluating and treating patients and lied on his time and attendance records, according to the state Inspector General’s Office.

Read more at Rome Sentinel

Psychiatry: An Industry of Death Special Exhibition

A special showing of the Citizens Commission on Human Rights (CCHR) multimedia exhibition Psychiatry: An Industry of Death was held at Toronto’s St. Lawrence Centre Sept. 8 – 9. The reception launching the exhibit featured a report released June 23, 2017, by Dr. Dainius Puras, United Nations Special Rapporteur on the right to health.

In his report, Dr. Puras, who heads the Centre for Child Psychiatry Social Pediatrics at Vilnius University in Lithuania, states: “We need little short of a revolution in mental health care to end decades of neglect, abuse and violence.” He openly criticizes psychiatry for its egregious human rights violations, such as lobotomy and nonconsensual measures, points out psychiatry’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual is without a solid scientific basis, and that psychotropic drugs produce harmful side effects. “We have been sold a myth that the best solutions for addressing mental health challenges are medications and other biomedical interventions,” he says.

Read more at Digital Journal

CNY mental health aide charged with insurance fraud

An aide at a state mental health facility is facing felony and misdemeanor charges for allegedly submitting a false insurance claim.

Duane C. Hayes, 40, of Utica, was charged with first-degree falsifying business records and second-degree criminal possession of a forged instrument, both felonies. He has also been charged with attempted petit larceny.

The charges stem from an investigation conducted by the state inspector general’s office. Hayes, a security hospital treatment assistant at the Central New York Psychiatric Center in Marcy, is accused of filing false documents to his personal supplemental insurance carrier claiming he was on workers’ compensation and unable to work from Feb. 10, 2016 through June 15, 2016.

Read more at auburnpub.com

Woodstock pharmacist who stole and sold drugs sent to prison for 10 years

A former Woodstock pharmacist is facing a decade in federal prison after admitting to stealing and selling drugs and defrauding the Ontario Drug Benefit plan.

Yogesh Patel, 47, stole 3,000 fentanyl and 1,500 hydromorphone patches with a street value of about $1 million between 2013 and 2016 from a Rexall Pharmacy in Woodstock.

Last April, the Kitchener resident admitted to stealing the drugs for the purpose of trafficking and forging documents for about 150 prescriptions.

Patel’s lawyer Jim Dean wasn’t surprised by the lengthy sentence, given all the attention being paid to the nation-wide opioid crisis.

Read more at CBC News London

War on drugs: big pharma fights NHS bill curbs

With NHS budgets under pressure and medicine prices inexorably going up, something had to give.

Nevertheless, the decision by some of the world’s largest pharmaceutical firms this summer to challenge public sector powers to limit drug bills in the High Court still raised eyebrows.

The action brought by trade body the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry (ABPI) divided the sector, with Britain’s two largest drug makers, FTSE 100 giants GlaxoSmithKline and AstraZeneca, distancing themselves from a move driven by overseas conglomerates.

Read more at The Telegraph

RCMP launch 20 investigations involving Chinese vendors delivering fentanyl to Canada

RCMP have launched at least 20 investigations involving 70 vendors shipping fentanyl directly from China to Canada.

Mounties are working with the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) to seize packages of the deadly opioid, make arrests and lay charges.

The Mounties and CBSA, along with Canada Post, have worked together to identify the best way to flag parcels arriving from China at three international mail-sorting centres — Montreal, Mississauga, Ont., and Vancouver, which gets most of the mail going to destinations across the country.

Read more at Global News

Lawsuits on behalf of Avoyelles, Rapides sheriffs target ‘Big Pharma’

Lawsuits filed Monday on behalf of the Avoyelles and Rapides sheriffs are among the first in Louisiana against pharmaceutical companies that attorneys say bear blame for an opioid crisis that public entities are ill equipped to handle.

The Lafayette law firm Laborde Earles filed the 73-page lawsuits Monday morning in district courts. Both name companies and individuals and include a host of allegations, including that the defendants “knew that, barring exceptional circumstances, opioids are too addictive and too debilitating for long-term use for chronic non-cancer pain lasting three months or longer.”

Read more at The TownTalk

Big Pharma Company Caught Faking Cancer Patients to Sell Deadly Opioid Drugs

It’s no secret that many pharmaceutical drugs have life-threatening side effects, but oftentimes they aren’t discussed when the medication is being prescribed to the patient. It’s important that, when taking any pharmaceutical drug, you weigh the pros and cons of taking the drug, because when it comes to pharmaceuticals, the benefits don’t always outweigh the risks.

Sometimes, the wrong drugs will be prescribed to patients, but it isn’t very often that Big Pharma companies get caught literally conspiring to do so. Pharmaceutical company Insys Therapeutics is currently under investigation for making it look like patients had cancer (when they did not) so they could sell their opioid drugs to them.

Read more at Collective Evolution

Big Pharma marketing scheme banned by Ontario

Ontario is banning a new Big Pharma marketing scheme that uses electronic medical records to sell drugs.

The prohibition comes after a Star investigation found Telus Health has been inserting electronic vouchers for brand name drugs into its popular medical record software (EMR) used by thousands of doctors across Canada.

“Ontario patients must have confidence that (prescribing) decisions are not influenced by marketing programs or electronic vouchers,” Health Minister Dr. Eric Hoskins said in a statement.

Read more at The Toronto Star