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House Hansard - 200

44th Parl. 1st Sess.
May 18, 2023 10:00AM
Context: House Hansard - 200 - May/18/23
Mr. Garnett Genuis (Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, CPC)
  • May/18/23 4:27:32 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, after eight years of the Prime Minister, everything feels broken. Life costs more. Work does not pay, and housing costs have doubled. The Prime Minister divides to control the people. Worst of all, crime and chaos, drugs and disorder rage in our streets. Nowhere is this worse than the opioid crisis, and that has expanded so dramatically in the last several years. Across the board, we see that the government is not working. That is why I am in full support of today's opposition motion, which proposes to reverse the damage being done by the Liberal government's drug policy and advances an authentically compassionate alternative approach to the opioid crisis. Conservatives believe in universal and immutable human dignity. When it comes to those who are struggling with addiction, we believe in both meeting people where they are at, helping them pursue an ambition for recovery, and doing it successfully. The approach of all of the other parties in this place reflects a basic pessimism about the potential of those struggling with addiction. They want to meet people where they are at, but leave them there, while we want to meet people where they are at and help them pursue recovery. Parents, brothers, sisters and friends do not just want to see those struggling receive a kind of palliative care. They want to see us take the steps that would allow those who are struggling to come home drug free. This means that we need to make smart choices with scarce resources by investing those resources in treatment and recovery instead of spending those dollars to buy dangerous drugs and give them a away. The approach of every other party in the House is to dramatically increase the supply of dangerous hard drugs into our neighbourhoods. They argue that this is an appropriate response to the drug supply being poisoned, and because of a poisoned drug supply, they want to offer cleaner versions of these drugs. Let us be clear, hard drugs are poison. Giving away taxpayer-funded poison is not a solution to people being poisoned. Giving away less potent versions of these drugs ignores the nature of opioids themselves. Opioids have a tolerance-inducing effect, which means that people generally need higher and higher doses to achieve the same impact. If a person is on a course of treatment and recovery, where they are offered targeted alternatives with unique properties, then they can go the other way. However, absent the intentionality, the reflexive course of opioid use is a dangerous upward escalator. Free, government-funded opioids today would still lead to the use of even more potent, unregulated opioids tomorrow. As we are seeing now, this policy of supplying government-funded hard drugs into neighbourhoods and communities does not just hurt those who are already facing addictions. It also makes these hard drugs more plentiful, more available and easier for vulnerable kids to access for the first time. We know this because of what we are seeing in B.C., where these so-called safe supply policies have been tried. We also know this because of the particular history of the opioid crisis. This is where I want to focus my remarks today. Where did the current opioid crisis come from? The evidence shows us that most people who struggle with opioid use disorders did not start down this road by experimenting with street drugs. They started down this road because a family-owned pharmaceutical company called, Purdue Pharma set out, starting in the 1990s, to revolutionize pain management through the aggressive marketing of OxyContin, and sought to make a lot of money in the process. This history is well told in a number of books. I would recommend Empire of Pain by Patrick Radden Keefe, Dreamland by Sam Quinones and chapter seven of When McKinsey Comes to Town. Here is the essential background: Opium is the original opioid, and there was a long-standing reluctance in the medical community to prescribe it, except in the most extreme cases. Purdue Pharma sought to create the impression that OxyContin, its new semi-synthetic opioid was less potent than opium. It was actually more potent. OxyContin also incorporated a controlled release technology. It was designed to facilitate a controlled release of opioid-related pain relief over a period of time. This also helped create an illusion of less risk. However, OxyContin's controlled release mechanism was not tamper resistant. It could easily be modified to release all of the hit at once. It carried all of the same risks as, in fact greater risks than, opium. Purdue Pharma made unfounded claims minimizing the addiction risk associated with OxyContin and aggressively marketed it as the solution for all kinds of pain, not only acute pain following an extreme event but also ongoing chronic pain. It was marketed as a low-risk powerful pain relief option, and it was marketed very successfully. As a result, many people with different levels of short-term and long-term pain had the opioid OxyContin prescribed to them. Then, because of the now well-known tolerance-inducing effect associated with opioids, people could not get the same level of pain relief at the same dose. They would seek higher and higher doses, and eventually transition away from just prescription drugs to street drugs as well. For those here or elsewhere who have lost loved ones to opioid use disorders, many will recognize this story. There is pain, perhaps from a car accident or a long-running, unexplained, chronic pain, and then opioids are prescribed, followed by opioid addiction, and a subsequent spiral as higher and higher doses are sought to achieve the same effect. Perhaps, at some point, people seek treatment and recovery, but they find a complete lack of accessible services available. Purdue Pharma's objective was to minimize any concern or stigma around its new product OxyContin. When it was released in 1996, OxyContin was a new drug, and indeed false claims were made to minimize its risk. It was also sold generally through regulated pharmacies. This was not about stigma. It was not about unpredictability of supply or alteration of supply. This is actually a test case of what happens when drugs are easily available with little or no stigma. In effect, the overpromotion of opioids by Purdue and others with dangerous pharmaceutical-grade drugs made easily available was the original safe supply program, and that is what gave us the opioid crisis in the first place. Needless to say, for pioneering this original safe supply program, Purdue is not getting any congratulations. It has become a global pariah and the name of the Sackler family, who owned Purdue, is being stripped off of the universities and art galleries they donated to. This original safe supply program is now seen for what it is. It was an elaborate scheme to market the problem of pain and then sell a solution that was far worse than the problem, undertaken contrary to the evidence and with the sole aim of making one family rich. Conservatives have advanced a simple proposal in response to the wrongdoing associated with this first attempt at making big pharma rich through so-called safe supply. Our proposal is that Purdue Pharma, the Sackler family and all of the other bad actors involved, including McKinsey, pay compensation for the full cost associated with the opioid crisis and that the government spend 100% of the dollars collected through such litigation to fund treatment and recovery. The government needs to be ready to step up and help, yes, but let us make those responsible for this problem pay to fix it to fill the treatment and recovery gap. I have not had time to review all of the history here, but there is one piece that I think is particularly noteworthy. The original formulation of OxyContin was said to go off patent in the United States in 2013. However, likely in an effort to extend patent exclusivity, Purdue Pharma released a new formulation of OxyContin with certain abuse-resistant features. It then filed papers with the FDA asking the agency to reject generic versions of the original pill on the grounds that the original version was unsafe. Purdue also pulled the original formulation from the U.S. market. The FDA concurred with the company and blocked generic re-formulations in the U.S. This led to the marketing of a new, somewhat safer, tamper-resistant product, but it also allowed Purdue Pharma to continue to have patent exclusivity in the United States and make even more money. However, while both Purdue and the FDA said that the original formulation was unsafe, Purdue continued to sell the original, easier-to-abuse version here in Canada for a full year after the original OxyContin was off the shelves in the United States. In other words, Purdue was selling a drug in Canada which they had explicitly lobbied the FDA in the United States to be unsafe. Notably, sales rose dramatically in border areas, quadrupling in Windsor, suggesting that the company knew that the more dangerous versions of the drug were being sold in Canada and smuggled back into the United States. Purdue admitted that it was aware of the resulting spike in OxyContin sales in Canadian border towns. This is clear evidence of Purdue's extreme malice and of the particular impact that this has had for Canadians. What can we learn from these events? First of all, we need to be constantly aware of the risk of large companies overmarketing potentially dangerous products. This is the cause of the opioid crisis, and we are seeing risks of this happening in other cases. We also must learn that so-called safe supply does not work. Trying to minimize the recognized risks associated with clearly dangerous products, making them widely available through pharmaceutical sales, clearly does not work. It did not work then, as it gave us the opioid crisis in the first place, and it is not working now. To deter this kind of behaviour, we need to punish the perpetrators of this crime. The perpetrators are not those suffering from addiction, but the bad, elite actors who push these drugs onto people who are unaware of the risks, and who sought to minimize those risks. Therefore, I am pleased to support this motion and to move an amendment to it, which brings in this concept of holding bad actors responsible and of using the resources thus gathered to fund treatment and recovery. I move, seconded by the member for—
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