HALIFAX - Nova Scotia's health minister says her province has decided not to fund the prescription painkiller OxyContin and its successor drug OxyNeo.
Maureen MacDonald says Nova Scotia and the other three Atlantic provinces are acting on the advice of a regional common drug review committee.
MacDonald says the move is intended to reduce the abuse of prescription painkillers.
She says patients who are already prescribed Oxycontin will be grandfathered to a new formulation that will be made available under certain "exceptional circumstances" to cancer patients and those in palliative care.
MacDonald says doctors won't have as much Oxycontin available to prescribe once it is removed from the provincial formulary.
The maker of Oxycontin will stop manufacturing the drug in Canada at the end of the month and will replace it with OxyNeo.
