Experts in addiction are asking for a national strategy to fight what they call “rampant prescribing of opioids” and to reduce the high number of related deaths. An estimated 2,000 Canadians died from opioid overdoses in 2015 and provinces are “on track” for a record number of deaths in 2016, say experts at Canada’s biggest mental-health and addictions hospital, CAMH.
Canada is the world’s second highest consumer of the powerful painkillers with prescriptions steadily increasing over the past 20 years and “corresponding misuse, disorders and deaths,” says a news release.
CAMH experts are calling for several measures including enforceable guidelines for prescribing opioids in limited dosages for limited duration, establishing a real-time monitoring system for doctors and pharmacists and a national system to track emergency department visits and overdose deaths.
They are also calling for more access to treatments of opioid addiction.
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