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In response, Health Canada, under the former Conservative government, drafted regulations that would have forced opioid manufacturers to make their oxycodone products, and eventually all opioids, tamper-resistant.

But the Liberals ditched the plan this month.

“It would be wise if it worked, but the result is that introduction of tamper-resistant products actually only serves to increase the use of other products on the market. You can’t take a single approach to a drug,” Philpott told the House of Commons’ health committee April 11.

Cost was another issue. Tamper-resistant formulations are two to four times more expensive, deputy minister of health Simon Kennedy told the committee. “There are a number of Canadians who, for financial or other reasons, may not be able to afford that kind of medicine. If you move an entire class of pain medication into that kind of technology, you would effectively be dramatically raising the cost.”

Dr. Roman Jovey, medical director of CPM Centres for Pain Management in Mississauga, Ont., and author of the April 25 letter to Philpott, acknowledges that making all opioids tamper-resistant will be more expensive.

“However, this is a unique case where the social ‘costs’ of maintaining the status quo may be much higher than the savings from drug costs alone,” he writes in the letter, endorsed by 37 physicians from across Canada, mostly pain and addiction specialists.

In March, a dozen U.S. congressmen, most from border states, wrote to Philpott asking her to limit the availability of non-tamper-resistant opioids, which are finding their way into the illegal drug market there. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has approved five tamper-resistant opioids and says 30 others are in development.

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