This is absolutely excellent journalism 👏. The kind of journalism that many Canadian newsroom struggle to do because they lack resources. Please support it if you can.
Summary
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North American doctors prescribe a huge amount of opioid painkiller pills.
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Canada is a country deeply influenced by the United States. Health Canada followed the US FDA when most European countries were extremely cautious. Canadian Medical Schools allowed US drug companies to spread questionable content.
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The U.S. is one of the only countries in the world that allow prescription drugs to be advertised on TV. The Sackler family spent $200-million annually marketing Oxycontin opioids. Many Canadians regularly watch american TV channels and painkiller ads are hard to miss.
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The crisis spilled from inside doctor’s offices to city streets as drug dealers capitalized on a new wave of clients. Then came the second trigger: the shift from heroin to fentanyl in the mid-2010s.
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Europe has a warning system that tracks the emergence of new psychoactive substances (NPS). They are identified through laboratory testing of seizures by law enforcement. Member states are alerted as soon as possible, allowing them to respond to the threat.
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It’s easier to get rehab treatment in Europe. Most rehab facilities in Canada are privately owned.
The thing about Europe is that, even with the diversity of geography, languages, cultures, and histories the collection we know as “Europe” still finds itself doing better than the US by most metrics.
They generally have more rights and protections, better healthcare(easy), and often times populations that are more willing to get out and fight back when they need to(despite a lack of guns that’s wild, huh?). They also have the EU to help with a lot of that which also has the implication that countries who find that sort of thing important also care about the stuff that the EU does.
And, of course, if we didn’t say “Europe” we’d have to list all the countries that blow the US out of the water on pretty much any positive metric and their fragile little egos couldn’t take it(plus it would take forever).