OFFICIAL DOUBTS DOCTORS FEEDING C.B. ADDICTS' PAINKILLER HABITS

Nova Scotia's deputy minister of health is challenging reports that
suggest addicts in Cape Breton are duping physicians into giving them
enough prescription painkillers to feed their habit.

Dr. Tom Ward, who appeared Wednesday before the legislature's public
accounts committee, said there is no hard evidence to prove doctors
are over-prescribing OxyContin, a powerful painkiller known on the
street as hillbilly heroin.

Three recent deaths in the Sydney area have been linked to
prescription drug abuse.

Cape Breton Regional Police have called for an inquiry, suggesting
part of the problem is that physicians are being fooled by addicts in
search of multiple prescriptions.

"I really think we need to get some in-depth understanding of the
problem," Ward told reporters after the meeting. "There is abuse of
prescription drugs, where they're coming from, we don't know."

The private company that monitors prescriptions for the province's
Pharmacare program conducted a three-year analysis and found nothing
unusual about the frequency with which OxyContin is prescribed.

Ward also said the province's use of the drug is not out of line with
the rest of the country, and suggested addicts may be getting their
pills from street dealers and not from doctor offices.

But the chief of Cape Breton Regional Police said his officers are
telling him that many of the OxyContin arrests they've made involve
prescriptions, not illegal drugs.

"We're putting people in our lockups who don't belong there," said
Chief Edgar MacLeod.

"They're simply there for safekeeping. They've committed no crime.
They're sick, but there's no place else to put them. These are people
with severe addiction problems."

Nova Scotia does not track prescriptions electronically, something
police have asked the provincial Health Department to do.

Replacing the province's paper-based system would cost $25 million,
Ward said.

The opposition Liberals said the government is not taking the problem
seriously.

"There are three people who've died within the last week and half,"
said health critic Dave Wilson, who represents the Cape Breton riding
of Glace Bay.

"How much more evidence do you need that there's a
problem?"

Meanwhile, police and community workers in Cape Breton have warned
that OxyContin abuse is reaching epidemic proportions on the island.
It has been linked to a rising crime rate and an escalating number of
domestic abuse cases.

The drug has been described as being as powerful as heroin when
dissolved and used intravenously.

"Police have been calling for an improved monitoring system," said
Wilson. "The (Health) Department has known about it. They're sitting
on it. And because of that inaction people are dying."

Wilson noted that Newfoundland and Labrador, which is struggling to
deal with widespread OxyContin abuse, has ordered a task force to
investigate. The task force released an interim report last month that
concluded OxyContin abuse appeared to be more widespread in
Newfoundland than in any other province.

The review said it appears there was a 400 per cent increase in
OxyContin prescriptions written in Newfoundland between 2000 and 2003.