Nearly 90 per cent of Alberta drug loss cases reported as 'unexplained'

Prescription drugs are going missing in Alberta — and most of the time, no one knows why.

Data from Health Canada based on reporting from pharmacies, drug wholesalers, hospitals and others over a six-year period from 2018 to 2023 shows that 88 per cent of all reports were classified as "loss unexplained."

The Alberta data is part of a national data set obtained by CBC News through an access-to-information request.

Many of the largest losses of drugs were highly addictive opioid painkillers and benzodiazepines. The top two medications by unit quantity lost in Alberta were codeine and oxycodone.

The findings for Alberta differ from the picture drawn by the national data set.

In the national data, CBC found unexplained losses now account for the majority of the potentially addictive and dangerous drugs reported missing to Health Canada. That's a change from the previous six-year period, when most of the reported losses were due to theft.

Alberta ranked second among all provinces in all but one year of the data, for total number of tablets, capsules or similar units lost.

Nationally, the figures were driven by a relatively small number of high-volume losses. There were 102 reports involving losses of more than 10,000 units of a drug across the country, but only one occurred in Alberta.

The largest single loss report in the data occurred in Alberta — the internal theft of 54,500 tablets of the highly addictive opioid painkiller oxycodone, also known by the brand name Oxycontin.

Limited information about the theft, which was reported to Health Canada in 2019, is captured in the data. It's not clear where in Alberta the incident took place, or whether the theft occurred over time or all at once. The incident has not previously been publicly reported.

Health Canada declined to provide additional information, but said law enforcement was notified.

Despite it being the largest reported theft of pills in Canada in six years, the provincial regulator — the Alberta College of Pharmacy (ACP) — said it didn't have sufficient information to confirm whether it was aware of the incident.

Different classifications of medication have different reporting requirements.

Losses of some dangerous or highly addictive drugs classified under the federal Controlled Drugs and Substances Act are required to be reported to Health Canada within 72 hours.