Pubdate: Sat, 23 Aug 2014
Source: Medicine Hat News (CN AB)
Copyright: 2014 Alberta Newspaper Group, Inc.
Contact:  http://www.medicinehatnews.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1833
Author: Alex McCuaig

A TALE OF TWO DRUGS

An outsider could be forgiven for seeing Canada's policy on illegal
street drugs as somewhat upside down.

A disproportionate amount of time, effort and comment is being devoted
to marijuana, an illegal drug for the most part, than oxycodone, a
legally produced and prescribed drug.

What these two drugs have in common is that they are street
drugs.

In July this year, city police arrested a man with 800 prescription
painkillers.

One man on one day in one small Canadian city with hundreds of Health
Canada certified pills in his possession.

While casual dealing of over-prescribed painkillers is all too common
in Medicine Hat, the drug bust earlier this year - and others -
demonstrate the availability to small-time drug dealers of oxycodone,
Dilaudid and fentanyl on a commercial scale.

By some accounts, Canada has the highest per capita usage of
prescription painkillers in the world.

 From a drug addict's or dealer's perspective in Canada, this is a
golden era.

No longer do addicts have to worry about the strength of street bought
heroin or whether it's too strong or weak. At least not when you can
count on Health Canada approved street drugs that come with all the
guarantees associated with federal regulations pertaining to health
and safety in their production, strength and dosage.

And few people were more jubilant than addicts and the drug-peddlers
who serve them at the federal government's decision to licence the
generic version of the easily abusable form of OxyContin in 2012.

Former health minister Leona Aglukkaq ignored warnings at the time by
U.S. authorities that doing so was unwise and poised a risk of
Canadian prescription drugs being trafficked south of the border.

Those predictions have since been realized in addition to continued
widespread abuse in Canada.

Earlier this week, current Health Minister Rona Ambrose acknowledged
the growing epidemic of prescription drug abuse by Canadians,
announcing tougher warning labels will be put on the drugs.

Tougher warning labels, wow.

The energy, time and resources the federal government has put into
discussing the ills of marijuana and the Conservative Party's use of
the issue as a political hammer pales in comparison to what has been
done to address the far more pressing concern of prescription drug
abuse.

While this government has gone out of its way to make it difficult for
doctors to prescribe medicinal marijuana, it has virtually given free
reign to drug companies to flood the streets with powerful and
extremely addictive narcotics.

If the federal government can't address the accessibility of drugs it
strictly approves and regulates, what possible chance do they have to
address issues pertaining to drugs they don't have such control over.
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MAP posted-by: Matt