I think it's a good strategy. In my practice we saw a lot of patients seeking Tylenol 1s, and it got to the point where we required a patient assessment by the pharmacist to see if it was an appropriate therapy, for example, for a migraine or abscessed tooth infection. Then the pharmacist would write a prescription as appropriate, and we would put it on our pharmacy system and it would be fed into the electronic health records so it could be tracked. The idea was that the appropriate patients would be taken care of, and the patients who were drug-seeking would no longer be able to gain access to it, and we would inform them of alternative therapies such as addiction services.
I can certainly say what we've done in our pharmacy has made a big difference, and I think what Manitoba has done certainly would. I do have concerns with those patients who are getting Tylenol 1s, codeine products, for appropriate therapies. If you do up-schedule it and pharmacists can no longer prescribe it after doing a thorough assessment, I think that could be concerning, but I do think there's an opportunity there to find solutions that take care of both parties.