I think the black market for oxycontin is going to get a lot more vicious. Maybe exported drugs that cost many times more and likely to be either bogus or toxic will be next.

All this at a time when our ill-informed elected officials and their sycophants couldn't give a rat's arse about proactive health care for addicts anyway.

Wish I was more optimistic. 

Just as meth was a scourge in the US before Canada, Oxy was also.

When people could not afford or get cocaine, crack or crank would have to do. Why? They are addicted to amphetamines.

When folks cannot get an Oxy, they will find out they can get more than couple bags of heroin for the price of one 80mg Oxy. Why? They are addicted to opiates. If they are snorting Oxy, they will snort heroin. If they are shooting Oxy, they will shoot smack.

If they are just taking them orally or inserting them, they can still get opana, percs, or roxies.

IT is a big worry, SG, and I certainly don't see any mobilization of resources across the province to deal with the situation - which is very sad and sadly, not surprising.

Today I was speaking with a First Nations friend who lives on Manitoulin Island.  There is great worry there, as addiction is a huge problem.  He tells me that homes are broken into if it is known that someone had recent surgery - to steal meds.   He tells me, yes, there is a methodone clinic in Little Current - where they make the First Nations people line up outside on the sidewalk before they are admitted to the building - for all to see, and taunt.   Where crimes & deaths from drugs are always reported on the front page of the local paper, if occuring in First Nations community, and rarely mentioned if other (non-Native) Island inhabitants are involved.   There is such racism still.  I feel sad about it. 

It will be as disastrous as the deinstitutionalization of the mentally ill.  Institutionalization was not a good solution, however throwing people out onto the street with no support was even worse.  Apparently our health system does not learn from its mistakes...

The knowledge of prescription abuse has been known for decades ... yet the medical profession chose not to address it because, as the OP header says, those scripts were a quick fix: 'here luv, pop a pill and all will be better' when really it was 'sorry luv, I don't have time to deal with all your problems so take this pill and go away'.

Our, as in the government and system our, response will be to lock these abandoned individuals not in hospitals or treatment centres but in jails because that too is a quick fix.

We don't have "mental" institutions anymore we have prisons, and the thing is, those replacement institutions are not quick fixes but long term scourges that repair nothing.

Delisting oxycontin does not address what caused the problem; doctors over prescribing and worse, in my opinion, not following through with weaning the patient off the medication.  Oxycontin will be replaced with some new pill (because that is where the quick profits are) and the the burden will once again be put on the patient perpetuating the downward cycle.

Just once I would like to see history not repeat itself.  Just once I would like to see our governments and systems look for long term solutions and not quick fixes.

But what is equally important, and sobering, is how often we fool ourselves. And we fool ourselves not only individually but en masse. The tendency of a group of human beings to quickly come to believe something that its individual members will later see as obviously false is truly amazing. Some of the worst tragedies of the last century happened because well-meaning people fell for easy solutions proposed by bad leaders.
      Lee Smolin,

I agree, LB, there will be another pill that will take the place of oxycontin, and the addictions and all that goes with it will not disappear, it will just change slightly.

I don't know much about oxycontin, but my guess is that there is a company out there that has made mega-bucks off the backs of those who became addicted to it, through legal prescription writing by doctors in offices.  My guess also is that they will be scrambling to replace it so that legal prescriptions can be written by doctors in offices.

My heart aches for those, and their families, who are addicted to oxycontin, and other substances.  What a life of heartache, pain, turmoil, and despair.

It also breaks my heart of the innocent that get hurt to fulfill others addictions - workers in pharmacies who are killed or injured in robberies that have become so commonplace and brave, individuals in homes who are faced with home invasions and robberies, etc.

A complex situation, no easy fixes!

People hear about 500 deaths in Ontario from Oxycontin.... what they are not told and do not know is that most overdose deaths occur in people who have recently withdrawn or detoxed....they go into withdrawl and when you are chemical tolerant, that tolerance fades as withdrawl happens... they try to use the same amount as they were before and they overdose.

I have read that oxcycontin addiction is also a big problem with the elderly in every community. I'll bet withdrawal will be fatal for them in a lot of cases too, given their more fragile constitutions.

This is just terrible in so many ways.

I know of one case recently where a doctor was worried about an elderly person with chronic pain having an Oxycontin dependency or addiction and the doctor the next time they went in gave them a prescription for Tegretol (a non-narcotic seizure med given for nerve pain).  She is a generation where Drs aren't questioned and she never abused the medsa, did not think she could be addicted, just assumed this new medicine was like the old.... I went over and she was in bed sweating, vomiting... with the flu. I asked her if she had missed her meds... no, she was on new ones... An ER trip proved it was what it was - opium withdrawl.

It initiated local conversations with folks about what narcotics are, what addiction really is (it is not drug abuser or junkie)... and plans for this eventuality and that they can be informed patients.

Thank goodness you checked in on her SG.   Sometimes docs do not make good choices, despite their good intentions.  I've certainly seen those kind of decisions myself, with various types of meds being abruptly stopped without regard for the discontinuation syndrome that goes along with that action.

Then of course we also see the folks on the other end of the spectrum who won't take a pill ever for fear of  'addiction' - and suffer greatly. 

Ninja, I would say that benzos are also a big problem in many elderly folks - valium & its cousins - some of which are quite addictive & contribute to falls & other nasty consequences for our older folk.   Seniors are less likely to buy stuff on the street tho.

I was listening to the Whitney Houston saga... and I heard discussion about benzos and baths. The doctors were talking about how patients should know better... I cannot say I ever gave thought to having a shower or bath after taking a pill and waiting for it to take effect. Yet, I do not take it so why would I?

I start asking the folks on Ativan, Xanax, pain meds... and nobody was ever told anythign about showers or baths... I called my mom who takes Klonopin at night... had anyone ever told her? No.

Then someone says, "I should have thought of that after a friend died taking a hot bath with a pain patch on, nobody told her either".  Fentalyn patch and the heat sped up the release. I am horrified. I relate the story to my mom in Texas and she tells me about someone dying in the heat and sunshine from the same thing...

I know we get told not to use the curling iron in the shower... so why not this?