QUEBEC—Canada’s opioid epidemic isn’t a single crisis but a complex set of overlapping crises that will take multiple strategies to solve, a panel of experts told the annual meeting of the Canadian Medical Association on Aug. 22.
“This is a crisis for Canada and every community is going to have to deal with it,” Dr. David Milne, a Calgary-based anesthetist told about 1,200 delegates attending the CMA meeting in Quebec City.
“As a profession, we must accept responsibility for this and help to remedy it,” said Milne, referring to the long history of physicians overprescribing opioids to manage patients with chronic pain.
Dr. David Juurlink, head of clinical pharmacology and toxicology at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre in Toronto, said the medical community was misled in the 1990s by drug makers about the potential harms of opioids, including U.S.-based Purdue Pharma, which claimed its slow-release drug OxyContin posed little danger of addiction, even with long-term use.
