Health Canada moves to ban non-prescription codeine sales

[S.J.B.]

Health Canada moves to ban non-prescription codeine sales
Dean Beeby
CBC
September 11th, 2017

Health Canada is moving to ban non-prescription sales of codeine, a widely used opioid that has been linked to abuse and dependency.

The department is proposing to make pain pills, cough syrups and other familiar medications that contain codeine available only with a doctor's prescription.

The regulatory notice says about 600 million low-dose codeine tablets, or about 20 for every person in the country, were sold across Canada in 2015. It notes that more than 500 people entered addiction treatment centres in Ontario alone between 2007 and 2015, with non-prescription codeine as their only problem substance.

Then Health Minister Jane Philpott warned last year she would tighten the rules on over-the-counter codeine.

"While a prescription may not be needed today, codeine can produce drug dependence and has the potential for being abused," she told a Toronto conference in June 2016.

Read the full story here.

Read the regulatory notice here.

 

[LucidSDreamr]

Punish millions upon millions so a few ppl won't get the barley noticable high ...great plan

 

[Jekyl Anhydride]

Banning Kratom &/or Codeine amidst an opioid crisis is just brilliant... at least as far as cartels/DNM's consider it I imagine. If something has to be sacrificed to "protect the public", why not Rx loperamide or make it logged in a fashion similar to psuedeoepedrine? It seems as though some politicians couldn't be any more detached from real world reality.

 

[sekio]

For example, in Ontario alone, from 2007 to 2015, an average of 880 individuals per year (representing approximately 2.0% of total admissions per year) who were newly admitted into publicly funded addiction treatment centres indicated non-prescription codeine products as one of their five problem substances. In that same nine-year period, over 500 individuals admitted to these treatment centres stated that non-prescription codeine was their only problem substance.

So ~1.1% of drug users have a codeine addiction? Why are we doing this again? I know probably half a dozen people who use Tylenol 1 as directed.

 

[LucidSDreamr]

Sickening. Make everyone suffer and accomplish nothing in the realm of fentanyl mainlining

 

[cj]

Yay more money for drug dealers.

 

[Nagirrek]

This really seems unnecessary. As far as I remember, at least the last time I was in Canada over a decade ago, codeine could only be sold with caffeine and other additives, like acetaminophen or NSAIDs. I bought myself a big box, but the caffeine was quite unpleasant.

Why hurt the millions of people who use the drug without incident because less than a thousand people entered drug treatment? Surely it can't cost that much to manage that many methadone prescriptions?

Changes overseas could give MPs in my country ideas, and I don't want that. A big part of the problem is how we discuss and deal with addiction, not the availability of certain drugs. By requiring a prescription, many people are either going to go without or end up turning to more dangerous non-prescription drugs.

 

[poledriver]

This is coming in here in Aus the start of next year as well I believe (unless something has changed from this article) -

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-12-...nt-be-available-over-the-counter-2018/8133996

 

[peaceheeb]

^^I didn't know Aus. was considering it as well.

 

[poledriver]

Not just considering it I think it's definite now as far as I have heard / read.

Again, the majority get punished because a minority have issues with addiction.

But that's not the case with alcohol is it? Hmm.

 

[Ravr]

Lll