Canadians have one of the highest rates of prescription opioid use in the world – five times higher than in the U.K., for example. This is a tragedy because we don’t do any better at reducing chronic pain – just at creating addiction and an epidemic of overdose death. Despite this, I’m not advocating we ban certain types of prescription drugs outright. Knee-jerk decisions could leave people in pain, push those addicted to use more dangerous types of opioids, or increase use of illicit opioids such as heroin. Instead, we need to slow down the tap of opioid supply.

Source: thestar November 21, 2016 12:00 UTC