The government of British Columbia is off on another lengthy legal boondoggle as it seeks to make opioid manufacturers pay for the ongoing epidemic of opioid overdoses.
It spent an estimated $75 million to $100 million dollars to sue Dr. Brian Day for operating a private surgical clinic. That legal action started in 2009 and ended this year. But even as it was suing Dr. Day, it was also paying him and his clinic for their services to help eliminate long surgical wait lists.
Another massive lawsuit has B.C. trying to recover health-care costs from the tobacco companies. It was initiated in 1998 and, 25 years later, is still ongoing.
One can only imagine the hundreds of millions (and perhaps more) that the B.C. government is spending in an effort to make some commercial enterprise with deep pockets pay for our societal problems and Canada’s abysmal health-care system.
The current pursuit of Big Pharma and its marketing agents started in 2018 and, in its search for a monetary windfall, the government is asking the B.C. Supreme Court to certify a class action lawsuit on behalf of all jurisdictions in Canada. If the court certifies the lawsuit, then all provinces and territories could come together in one class-action suit to try to recover health-care costs related to the opioid epidemic. If the quest for certification fails, then each province/territory will have to launch independent legal action.
Meanwhile, some of the pharmaceutical companies have launched a constitutional challenge to the Supreme Court of Canada claiming it is a legal overreach for B.C. to recover costs on behalf of other provinces. The court just recently agreed to hear the case.
So, what did these “bad actors” do?
In the late 1990s, pharmaceutical groups aggressively marketed opioid pills to doctors via one-sided presentations and dinners at fine restaurants. They said chronic pain was undertreated (it was and still is) and told doctors that they had an irrational fear of opioids. As with most drugs, the sellers likely downplayed the potential side effects like addiction.
But Health Canada approved the addictive opioid Oxycontin in 1996. And it has always been incumbent upon individual doctors to understand when opioids are necessary, to know how they work, and to evaluate their patients for signs of addiction or tendencies to become addicted. For a subset of the population, oxycontin was a legitimate and effective treatment without giving way to addiction.
All this occurred more than 25 years ago. How can these companies be held responsible for the opioid deaths that have surged 300 percent since 2016 when illegal fentanyl (an opioid that is 50 times stronger than heroin and 100 times more powerful than morphine) came on the scene and B.C. declared opioids a public health emergency?
It is now largely accepted that it is the toxicity of illegal fentanyl and its various analogues that is driving the parade of death that is happening in cities across Canada—not prescription pills.
The current court proceedings should also shine a bright and hypocritical light on B.C.’s so-called safe supply initiatives that have the government providing large numbers of free, prescription-grade and highly addictive hydromorphone pills to opiate users in an effort to keep them away from toxic street drugs. Pills are carelessly dispensed like candy even though the drug can have the same or even greater potency than heroin.
In other words, the B.C. government itself is complicit in a practice that is now creating new and younger opioid addicts.
Isn’t that the same reason that it is suing the pharmaceutical companies?
