How the Suboxone Education Programme presented as a solution to risks in the Canadian opioid crisis: a critical discourse analysis by Quinn Grundy, Fiona Webster, Daniel Z Buchman, Sheryl Spithoff, Ross E G Upshur, Abhimanyu Sud, Matthew Strang

“…Within this context, this study examined how the ‘Suboxone Education Programme’, developed and delivered by a pharmaceutical company as part of a federally regulated risk management program, was presented as a solution to various kinds of risks relating to opioid use in public documents from medical institutions across Canada.Setting These documents were issued during the Canadian opioid crisis, a time when the involvement of industry in health policy was being widely questioned given industry’s role in driving the overprescribing of opioid analgesics and contributing to population-level harms.Design A critical discourse analysis of 69 documents collected between July 2020 and May 2021 referencing the Suboxone Education Program spanning 13 years (2007–2021) from medical, nursing and pharmacy institutions sourced from every Canadian province and territory. Discursive themes were identified through iterative and duplicate analyses using a semistructured data extraction instrument.Results Documents characterised the Programme as addressing iatrogenic risks from overprescribing opioid analgesics, environmental risks from a toxic street drug supply and pharmacological risks relating to the dominant therapeutic alternative of methadone. …”
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