Health committee  You need data on deaths and data on non-fatal overdoses. The data on deaths should come from the regional coroners, who should be empowered to collect data in real time and report it in real time. You can't fix what you're not even measuring. The information on non-fatal overdose

Health committee  Yes.

Health committee  Every hospital in the country could have a person who is empowered to report each week the number of drug overdoses that came to their emergency department. That would be easy. They report all kinds of other things that are far less important. It would not be hard to do.

Health committee  I agree.

Health committee  [Inaudible--Editor] to stop that problem, but we can take lessons, again, from B.C., which in the mid-1990s began a program called PharmaNet. Almost overnight, every doctor, and every pharmacist had access to real-time data. If you got a prescription in Richmond and the following

Health committee  I just want to correct that. I think you cited me as saying that these drugs shouldn't be prescribed. I didn't say that: they do have a role. I think abuse-deterrent formulations are a good thing generally. You can crush them, and you can chew them, and you can get a much highe

Health committee  Yes, I do. I think B.C. has already done that. In fact, the CDC in the U.S. introduced prescribing guidelines earlier this year, and I think B.C. has mandated their use. There is some danger in that, because those guidelines don't deal with the people on hundreds of milligrams

Health committee  It's invaluable. People are always going to use drugs. Not everybody who has an addiction wants to keep using. Many of them want out, and they should be given the opportunity to get out. But it's simply a fact that people do not die in safe injection sites. I agree with Sean that

Health committee  I think some of them have. I'd have to direct you back to the CCSA itself for the status of the various recommendations. I guess my point in making that comment earlier was that of those 58 recommendations, by definition some of them are more important than others. I have one i

Health committee  What kinds of prescriptions should be implemented for physicians? You'll get very different—

Health committee  Restrictions?

Health committee  Are you asking what restrictions I would advise?

Health committee  I think there are certainly different constructs, but from the prescribing perspective, I think as a physician I am conditioned to want to help my patient. I see pain all the time, and I'm scared of the other drugs, and I've become comfortable with opioids because of what we've b

Health committee  Education should focus on the fact that the goals of a drug are to impart more benefit than harm, and opioids very frequently don't do that. They can be beneficial to some patients in the long term, but the higher the dose goes the less likely that will happen. That's why I think

Health committee  In Ontario, it has roughly doubled over the last four years. In Alberta, I think fentanyl-related deaths have gone up about 5,000% over the span three or four years. That's no longer the prescription stuff; it's the illicit stuff that's coming into Canada from China, and being pr