This week,
Health Canada opened a public consultation on its “proposal to restore potential access to restricted drugs through the Special Access Program (SAP).”
The SAP allows healthcare professionals to request unapproved drugs for patients with serious or life-threatening conditions if other therapies have failed, aren’t suitable or are not available in Canada.
The proposal includes bringing MDMA and psilocybin back from a 2013 amendment to the Food and Drug Regulations that restricted these drugs, among others, to be part of the SAP.
If the once restricted drugs qualify again for the SAP, they would be treated as controlled substances, thus allowing healthcare professionals to request these drugs for patients.