Owen Sound's city council will be discussing correspondence this evening concerning participating in the following:

"Napoli Shkolnik Canada has filed a class action on behalf of all Canadian municipalities to recover their costs incurred in combating the opioid epidemic and to secure the funds necessary to implement abatement programs."

Below are examples of the damage that continues to be caused by opioids:

• Opioids claimed 34,455 deaths between January 2016 and September 2022.
• During the period 2010-2017 more than 4 billion dollars of prescription opioids were sold in Canada.
• There were more than 28,000 Emergency Medical Services (EMS) responses to suspected opioid-related overdoses in 2022 (January – September).
• Drug overdoses accounted for approximately 17% of all deaths among Canadians aged 30 to 39 in 2019, and 13% of deaths among those aged 40 to 49.
• 17 Canadian deaths per day on average in 2019 due to opioid overdoses.

T"he claims against the manufacturers of opioid products include claims of “false or misleading” representations under the Competition Act of Canada and public nuisance under the common law. The overarching allegation against manufacturing defendants is that they employed various branded and unbranded marketing methods to disseminate the false message that opioid pain medications were not addictive and were safe for long term use.

"Defendants knew that opioids were effective treatments for short-term post- surgical and trauma-related pain, and for palliative (end-of-life) care; yet they also knew –and had known for years – that opioids were addictive and subject to abuse, particularly when used long-term for chronic non-cancer pain (pain lasting 3 months or longer) and should not be used except as a last-resort."

The full correspondence is avaiilable in tonight's agenda: Item 9 a)