Mr. Chair, I thank the member for the question.
The member is, I believe, referring to the 2009 policy decision made by the U.S. Army. I believe that was in response to some research that I had published that had demonstrated that the drug had been used improperly on a large scale, particularly in Afghanistan. The drug had been prescribed to a growing number of service members with mental health contraindications. I think the U.S. Army was quite happy to dispense with the use of the drug. It had developed, by that point, plenty of experience with the drug's very unpleasant and dangerous adverse effects, and subsequently the rest of the U.S. military followed suit.
By 2013 when the U.S. Food and Drug Administration had mandated a boxed warning on the mefloquine product insert, the U.S. military had issued a policy that mefloquine be essentially a drug of last resort only, and that the two drugs that I referenced previously—atovaquone-proguanil and doxycycline—be used primarily in almost all circumstances.
I believe the Canadian military by this point had also moved away from mefloquine as a first-line drug, as did militaries around the world. I recall that when I was overseas I spoke with some French officers, and this was in the mid-2000s. They had long since abandoned the use of mefloquine because of operational experience with very unpleasant side effects of some operational significance associated with the drug. Germany, I believe, completely banned the use of the drug in their military around the time of our boxed warning. Essentially few countries if any make any significant use of mefloquine today. The drug remains on many formularies. It may be used by old-timers who have had favourable experience with the drug, but it would be very unusual for new troops to be issued mefloquine on deployments today.