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Dispensing Harm. How a handful of pharmacists flooded Ontario’s streets with lethal fentanyl amid a national opioid crisis

March 11, 2019

A burly man wearing a clown mask walks into a pharmacy. Brandishing a large knife, he heads straight for the dispensing counter and hands the pharmacist a note.

The pharmacist, Waseem Shaheen, opens the narcotics safe and fills a white garbage bag with fentanyl patches while the impatient robber waves his knife threateningly.

Shaheen hands over the bag and drops to his knees, hands in the air as the clown robber thrusts the knife through the air a few more times before beating a hasty retreat.

“I got robbed,” Shaheen told a 911 operator minutes later.

“What was taken?” the operator asked.

“Everything.”

Only this was no robbery at all.

It was a charade, concocted by Shaheen to cover up an illicit drug-dealing operation in which he trafficked at least 5,000 fentanyl patches out the back door of his Ottawa pharmacy.

While the provincial government monitors the prescribing and dispensing of opioids in Ontario, no alarms were raised by the conspicuous volumes moving through Shaheen’s pharmacy.

Read more at Global News

Filed Under: Government, Healthcare Waste Tagged With: healthcare criminality, healthcare fraud, Opioids, organized criminality in healthcare

Opioids no better than acetaminophen, ibuprofen for chronic back and arthritis pain: study

March 5, 2018

Acetaminophen, ibuprofen and other nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) are better than opioids at easing the intensity of chronic pain in the back, knees or hips, a U.S. experiment suggests.

And opioids are no better than these other drugs at reducing how much pain interferes with daily activities like walking, working, sleeping or enjoying life, researchers report in JAMA.

Read more at The Globe and Mail

Filed Under: Healthcare Waste Tagged With: Opioids, prescription drugs

Big Pharma is profiting from both opioids and overdose treatments

February 15, 2018

Some of the pharmaceutical companies selling prescription opioids that have caused thousands of deaths are looking to profit from the antidote for overdoses, according to a VICE News analysis of drug approval records from Health Canada.

One emergency room doctor in Toronto who regularly reverses opioid overdoses with naloxone said the revelations show “companies [are] cynically profiting from both ends of the crisis” that claimed an estimated 4,000 lives in Canada last year.

Read more at Vice News

Filed Under: Healthcare Waste Tagged With: big pharma, Canadian Health Care, Opioids, pharmaceutical companies

Purdue Pharma to stop marketing opioids to U.S. physicians, but policy not extended to Canada

February 11, 2018

The pharmaceutical giant that misled physicians and patients about the addictive properties of its top-selling drug OxyContin, fuelling an overdose crisis that has devastated communities across North America, will stop marketing opioids to U.S. physicians.

However, the new policy does not extend into Canada.

Purdue Pharma L.P. announced the change in a statement issued on the weekend.

Read more at The Globe and Mail

Filed Under: Healthcare Waste, United States Tagged With: Opioids, pharmaceutical companies, Purdue Pharma

Tribune Editorial: Time to sue Big Pharma

November 16, 2017

Salt Lake County officials announced Monday that the county is gearing up to sue pharmaceutical companies for damages caused by the recklessness and devastation of opioid addiction. They won’t be the first to do so, and it’s about time. In fact, there are over 100 counties across the nation gearing up to recover their costs associated with the epidemic, and many states have already filed.

Read more at The Salt Lake Tribune

Filed Under: Healthcare Waste Tagged With: big pharma, Opioids

As Opioids Cross the Border, Several Senators Consider Importing Drugs from Canada

October 19, 2017

Multiple bills circulating through Congress indicate lawmakers are interested in allowing Americans to import prescription drugs from Canada and other nations, even though that proposal has been strongly criticized by leading members of the law enforcement community.

Sens. John McCain (R., Ariz.) and Amy Klobuchar (D., Minn.) floated an amendment to the Senate budget bill Wednesday that would allow bills “relating to lowering the cost of prescription drugs in the United States by importing drugs from Canada.” McCain and Klobuchar are coauthors of the “Safe and Affordable Drugs from Canada Act,” which would allow Americans to buy prescription drugs from Canadian pharmacies, with some restrictions.

Read more at The Washington Free Beacon

Filed Under: Healthcare Waste Tagged With: Opioids, prescription drugs

Here’s how the VA helped Big Pharma get veterans hooked on opioids — then made the problem worse

October 12, 2017

he Veterans Administration overprescribed opiates and psychiatric medication for more than a decade, and then swung back dangerously in the other direction about five years ago.

Oxycontin manufacturer Purdue Pharma played a key role in spreading opiate use among veterans by giving $200,000 to essentially turn the VA into its propaganda arm, according to an investigative report by Newsweek.

Secret corporate documents obtained by the magazine show how the pharmaceutical company helped develop VA-Department of Defense guidelines that claimed opiates rarely cause addiction, and promoted the phony campaign, “Pain: The 5th Vital Sign.”

Read more at RawStory

Filed Under: Healthcare Waste, United States Tagged With: Opioids, pharmaceutical industry, psychiatric medication

“Opioid Avenger”: Mike Moore Takes Aim at Big Pharma

October 9, 2017

Former Mississippi Attorney General Mike Moore, who famously led a campaign to punish tobacco companies for lying about the dangers of smoking, has set his sights on the pharmaceutical industry, according to Bloomberg Businessweek.

Moore, a University of Mississippi alumnus who served as the state’s attorney general from 1998 to 2004, was the first state AG to file a lawsuit against Big Tobacco and won the largest corporate settlement in history—$246 billion for 50 states, with the money earmarked to fund smoking cessation and prevention programs.

Read more at hottytoddy.com

Filed Under: Healthcare Waste Tagged With: big pharma, Opioids

Canadian schools stock up on naloxone kits in wake of growing opioid crisis

September 5, 2017

As students across Canada head back to school, universities are stocking up on naloxone kits in the wake of the opioid crisis.

Opioid-related deaths claimed the lives of nearly 2,500 people in Canada in 2016, and hundreds more this year. The crisis is growing so rapidly that Health Canada recently put out a warning about the drug for students during orientation week.

Read more at Global News

Filed Under: Healthcare Waste Tagged With: Canadas health care system, Opioids

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