Thank you for your question, Mr. Lizon.
We can talk prescription drugs for moment, and you will get a variety of different answers depending on the witness, whether we want to talk about drug addiction, drug dependence, drug abuse, or drug misuse. For the context of our discussion here around prescription drugs, we're seeing either non-therapeutic use, with people using them for non-medical reasons, or secondary negative effects as a result of people using them even for therapeutic reasons. Let me explain, please.
You break your arm, you go to the hospital today, you will likely be prescribed an oral opiate or some sort of analgesic because of the pain in your arm. You might have that prescription for a week to deal with whatever the ailment is. You should not carry on with an opiate beyond that timeframe. Some of the issues that we're seeing concern how many opiates would you provide to Mr. Lizon with a broken arm. Would you ask him to come back at an earlier time? How would you dose it, and so on and so forth.
There are other people who have chronic diseases for which opiates have been indicated as relevant treatment, and these people, by definition, are dependent on the drugs. But that outweighs the conditions of not having access to those drugs for those chronic diseases.
The issue is really about what is the condition, what are we trying to treat for, and is it diverging from what are known to be acceptable practices for therapeutic purposes?
Paula.