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On Boxing Day, Geoff Moses will run out of the oxycodone pills that have controlled his chronic pain over the past three years, allowing him to work and have a life.

Once that last pill is gone, his pain will intensify and the 41-year-old employment counsellor will begin an ugly, slow withdrawal.

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Like thousands of others, Moses is collateral damage in a North American-wide opioid epidemic that has sparked the fentanyl crisis.

Opioid prescriptions in North America is more than six times higher per capita than prescription rates in Europe. In Canada, opioid prescriptions rose to 25.7 million in 2014 from 17.5 million in 2010, while in the United States, it spiked 500 per cent between 2000 and 2011.

For the past three years, Moses has been strictly following his doctor’s orders that have included agreeing to drug testing to ensure that Moses is taking, not selling, his oxycodone.

Last summer, the College of Physicians and Surgeons of British Columbia enacted opioid prescribing guidelines. And in November, it sent a letter to Dr. Andre Hugo.