B.C. opioid rules were to reduce overdoses. But they cut cancer patients’ pain meds – CTV
May 14, 2025
Rule changes designed to reduce opioid overdose deaths in British Columbia in 2016 inadvertently harmed cancer and palliative-care patients by reducing their access to pain killers, a new study has found.
The study published this week in the Canadian Medical Association Journal describes the impact of a practice standard issued by the College of Physicians and Surgeons of B.C. that June, about two months after the province declared a public health emergency over opioid deaths.
The rule changes were designed to mitigate prescription drug misuse, including the over-prescribing of opioids among patients with chronic non-cancer related pain.
The rules weren’t meant for cancer and palliative-care patients, but lead author Dimitra Panagiotoglou said there was a “spillover” effect as doctors applied “aggressive tapering” of the painkillers.
“(With) the ongoing messages that physicians were getting at the time — opioids being bad — individuals decided to pull back on their prescribing, but there was this larger population-level effect in doing so,” she said.
