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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.

The Problem with Pain: A Look at Canada’s Opioid Epidemic

One of the greatest health threats in North America is the opioid crisis. Since 2015 it has caused about five thousand deaths in Canada alone. Indigenous communities have been ravaged by the epidemic. National and provincial governments are being forced to take the matter in hand.

The fight has manifested itself in changes to healthcare policy, and class action lawsuits against Purdue Pharma, the drug company that allegedly pushed OxyContin™ and OxyNEO™ via marketing tactics that minimized the risks associated with the drug. In the US authorities have launched criminal investigations into Purdue’s marketing tactics and many Canadians are demanding that our leaders follow suit.

Read more at Forget The Box

Alberta doctors given new rules for prescribing opioids

Alberta physicians will soon have to check the medical histories of their patients before prescribing opioids, benzodiazepines, stimulants and sedatives.

The measure is part of a new mandatory rule passed Friday by the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Alberta.

“The new standard means there are more checks and balance in place for drugs that are subject to misuse and abuse,” said Kelly Eby, the college’s director of communications and government relations.

Read more at CBC News

Big Pharma Execs bribed doctors to prescribe more opioids amid national crisis, Feds say

The CEO of drug giant Insys Therapeutics bribed doctors to prescribe more opioids to patients who didn’t even need them, according to federal authorities who arrested the executive after a raid on Thursday—a major offensive in the battle against America’s opioid epidemic.

John Kapoor, the billionaire founder and CEO, led “a nationwide conspiracy to profit by using bribes and fraud to cause the illegal distribution of a fentanyl spray intended for cancer patients experiencing breakthrough pain,” the Department of Justice said in a statement.

Read more at Newsweek

Fighting the Opioid Epidemic by Targeting Big Pharma’s Bottom Line

Opioids now kill over 100 Americans every day. In a single year, opioids kill more Americans than died in the entire Vietnam and Iraq Wars. And while the underground drug trade is fueling this epidemic of medicalized self-destruction, the flow of black-market opioids is inseparable from its above-ground counterpart—the pharmaceutical companies that peddle the legal and FDA-approved pain killers like OxyContin and Vicodin. And now workers on the front lines of this crisis are challenging the nation’s biggest pushers to stop pumping deadly drugs into their neighborhoods.

Read more at The Nation