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A Kamloops doctor and addictions specialist has been ordered to pay $7,500 to a patient who was addicted to opioids for comments she wrote in a medical report about him.

The BC Human Rights Tribunal ruled that the comments were based on "discriminatory stereotypes about people with substance use disorders."

The doctor involved said it was "preposterous" to suggest she discriminated against the patient as she had dedicated her professional career to treating people with substance use disorders.

However, the BC Human Rights Tribunal didn't agree saying her comments – which were written in a medical report – were not based on facts and were based on discriminatory stereotypes.

The details are laid out in a recently published Oct. 17 BC Human Rights Tribunal decision involving a pharmacist suspended by the regulator because of his opioid addiction.

The unnamed pharmacist launched the Human Rights case against the College of Pharmacists of BC and Kamloops addiction specialist Dr. Mandy Manak.

The pharmacist argued the College and Dr. Manak had discriminated against him because he had an opioid use disorder and used Suboxone to treat it.

The doctor recommended the regulator not allow the pharmacist to return to work unless he stopped using Suboxone, a move the pharmacist said was a breach of the BC Human Rights Code based on disability.

"He further alleges that because of his substance use disorder, Dr. Manak stereotyped him in a report to the College as evasive, untrustworthy, suspicious, and dishonest," the decision read.

The decision said the pharmacist first developed substance use issues after he was prescribed opiates for hip pain and migraine headaches in 2009.

By 2013, he was diverting oxycodone from the pharmacy where he worked and taking it daily to "cope with life."

A year later, with his life a mess, he was admitted into a treatment centre and voluntarily suspended his license.

The lengthy 35,000-word decision goes through the pharmacist's history of addiction as his marriage fell apart and he's in and out of rehab.

At one point he got his licence back after being clean but slipped back into addiction and lost it again.

As part of his medical care, he sees Dr. Manak who writes reports for the College regarding the pharmacist's ongoing addiction.

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In one report, Dr. Manak wrote that she didn’t recommend the College give the pharmacist back his license yet.

The pharmacist said Dr. Manak's comments in that report "invoke negative stereotypes" about people with substance use disorders.

In the report to the College, the doctor suggested the pharmacist could be abusing anabolic steroids, that he should stop self-injecting testosterone, and that his unexplained weight loss and reliance on virtual and walk-in clinics were "red flags."

The doctor argued her comments were based on her assessment of the pharmacist and none of them were rooted in negative stereotypes.

"She says the questions she asked the pharmacist during the assessment were relevant and (her report) was comprehensive and detailed," the decision read. "Dr. Manak further says that when she formulated her opinion on the pharmacist’s fitness to practice, she exercised her professional medical judgment."

However, the Tribunal ruled the comments about "red flags" rested on a "discriminatory stereotype" that the pharmacy was deliberately trying to obtain medications from different doctors to abuse.

In the report the doctor also commented about the unemployed pharmacist spending $1,300 a week on his addiction.

"When asked how he afforded such a habit... he reported that he had been living off his savings, which he had 'invested wisely.' How he afforded to be off work, pay for rehab twice, and use $1,300 worth of heroin each week defies logic and remains a mystery to me, no matter how much he earned, saved, or invested," the doctor wrote in the report.

The pharmacist argued these comments were discriminatory, and the Human Rights Tribunal agreed.

"These comments strongly suggest that Dr. Manak believed he was earning money nefariously, specifically by drug dealing. There was no basis for that suggestion, which directly invokes stereotypes about people with substance use disorders being prone to criminality and dishonesty," the Tribunal ruled.

The pharmacist also argued that the doctor's comments about whether he'd be "like a kid in a candy store" if he returned to work were discrimination.

However, the Tribunal said while the question was "poorly worded" it wasn't discrimination.

The Tribunal ruled that the doctor's report, which recommended the College not to allow the pharmacist to return to work, was "reasonable and appropriate" and the regulator's decision not to return his licence wasn't discrimination.

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The Tribunal also accepted that the doctor didn't intend to discriminate against the pharmacist but that human rights law is about "effects, not intent."

The pharmacist argued for $75,000 in compensation.

"Drug dependence is a protected ground of discrimination in human rights law... stigmas surrounding drug dependence, like the belief that individuals suffering from it are the authors of their own misfortune or that their concerns are less credible than those of people suffering from other forms of disability, sometimes impair the ability of courts and society to objectively assess the merits of their discrimination claims," the Tribunal ruled.

Ultimately, the Tribunal dismissed the pharmacist's case against the College but ruled that the doctor had violated the BC Human Code and ordered her to pay $7,500 plus $700 in expenses to the pharmacist.

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