Marijuana legalization opponents say long-term health and social costs will be significant
Legalize and tax marijuana and the budget will balance itself. Marijuana advocates from stoners to recreational users to the prime minister have tried to convince us of this for years. But they’re all wrong. It makes some sense that a product so commonly used should be regulated rather than criminalized, sending its newly-enabled taxation revenues…
Despite the fanfare, the medical benefits of marijuana remain experimental for many conditions
Many Canadians can hardly wait for the day the recreational use of marijuana becomes legal. As a medical doctor, I'm far less enthusiastic. I worry about two things: the experimental nature of marijuana in medical practice and the public health consequences of legalized marijuana. Before you write me off as overly prudish or an anti-marijuana…
It’s time to talk about the overuse of antipsychotics among adults with developmental disabilities
By Yona Lunsky University of Toronto and Tara Gomes St. Michael’s Hospital Inappropriate prescribing of antipsychotic medications – drugs like Risperdal, Zyprexa and Abilify – to seniors, especially those in long-term care with conditions like dementia, has been a hot topic across Canada in recent years. We’ve also increasingly heard about the high numbers of these medications…
As fentanyl deaths continue to rise, we cannot continue to pretend that we are on the path to solving this problem
By Gabriela Novotna and Tom McIntosh University of Regina Thirteen Canadians a day were hospitalized for an opioid overdose in 2014-2015, according to the Canadian Institute of Health Information (CIHI), and the rate of opioid poisoning hospitalizations has been steadily rising. What began with the over-prescription of opioids such as OxyContin, a painkiller once thought to…
Two solutions to increase pharmaceutical manufacturers’ accountability to Canadians and their governments
By Vanessa Gruben and Louise Bélanger-Hardy University of Ottawa The 10 provincial governments recently accepted a class-action settlement with Purdue Pharma, the maker of OxyContin. The settlement concerns the misleading claims Purdue Pharma allegedly made to physicians about the addictive nature of the drug. These claims may have contributed to Canada’s epidemic of opioid addiction.…
A firewall has to be built between pharmaceutical companies and physician training programs