As of today, OxyContin was delisted in Canada.
Purdue Pharma Canada has stopped making it.
Physicians are being told they must prescribe a new medication, OxyNEO, instead.
But physicians say OxyNEO is just as addictive as OxyContin and it will be strictly regulated in Ontario, Saskatchewan, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island and Newfoundland and Labrador.
In Ontario, physicians will be able to prescribe OxyNEO for patients who have been using OxyContin to control pain but only for a year.
After that, Ontario Physicians will be able to use it only to control pain in palliative care patients or only when they can prove that they were unable to control chronic pain in a patient with any other analgesic.
It's much harder to crush or liquefy OxyNEO, says Purdue Pharma Canada, so it will be almost impossible for it to be snorted or injected.
Police forces across the country say that OxyContin is one of the most, if not the most, abused prescription medication ever.
Some refer to it as 'Hillbilly heroin' because it is a narcotic, or opioid, like heroin, because it produces a heroin-like high and because it is at least as addictive as heroin.
The difference is that it has been, up until now, much easier to obtain.
Even now, OxyContin pills are going for about $20 a piece but, with Canada's delisting of it, those prices are expected to rise sharply as supplies dwindle and addicts become desperate for another hit.
It has replaced Percocet and Percodan, also prescription narcotics, as the drug of choice for many street users for more than 10 years and hooked a good number of addicts in the past decade.
Police say these addicts are turning to increasingly more brazen and violent means of procuring either OxyContin or money to buy it.
The main reason it has become so popular, says a report on the drug released by Health Canada in 2004, is because the tablets are formulated to release a large dose of oxycodone (the medicinal ingredient in OxyContin) over a long period of time.
Tablets may have as much as 80 mg of oxycodone.
When a user crushes a tablet the oxycodone is released all at once and ingesting, snorting or shooting it up induces a high users describe as heroin-like.
Addiction to this narcotic is especially rampant among First Nation communities in Northern Ontario and this decision to suddenly remove it from the market is being heavily criticized because there are not enough facilities in place to deal with addicts withdrawing from drugs like narcotics at this time.
Estimates in Ontario indicate that 300-400 people die each year in the province from overdosing on OxyContin.
The decision to remove it from the market so suddenly, say critics, will plunge vast numbers of people into painful and debilitating withdrawal and there will be nowhere for them to go for help with their symptoms.
Among those critics is Algoma-Manitoulin MP Carol Hughes.
The full text of her release on this issue follows.