Health Minister Kelvin Goertzen this week announced easier access to a treatment drug for people struggling with opioid addiction. Suboxone can now be prescribed and covered by Pharmacare like any other drug, as long as the doctor feels it's necessary for treatment. Goertzen says health professionals tell him this is a very effective drug.

"It is not unlike methadone where it mimics some of the effects of opiates but then allows people to slowly bring themselves off of that addiction. From everyone that we talked to, in terms of experts and doctors but also those with lived experience with addictions, the suboxone does it in a much easier way and a more effective way, that you're far more likely to be able to break that cycle of addiction."

Goertzen says addiction is a complicated matter, something he has seen within his own family, and the government continues to work with health professionals to provide a variety of treatments to help people who want to recover.

"It's as much an issue of the heart as it is anything else. There are all sorts of reasons why people end up in an addictive lifestyle and many of those things have nothing to do with the drug itself but a lot of things that are happening within their lives. But you can't often deal with those issues, you can't often get to the root cause, until you can actually deal with the addiction itself. I think suboxone will make it easier to deal with the addiction and then, hopefully, those workers who are working with individuals can get to the issue of the heart and why it is that someone was led to addiction. So it's a tool to try to get to the real root of the problem."

Goertzen anticipates the easier access to suboxone will cost the province about $150,000 per year. And he considers that a very good investment.

"We expect we'll make that back times ten, I'm sure, based on the fact that we'll be able to get people off of addictions and back into a productive and healthy lifestyle."