A prominent Canadian doctor has begun to recycle unused prescription drugs to homeless people in Ottawa because he says they could not afford them otherwise, CBC News has learned.

Dr. Jeff Turnbull, chief of staff at the Ottawa Hospital in Ottawa, acknowledges the practice is controversial but says it is one way to ensure that homeless people get the medication they desperately need.

He and Dr. Ron MacCormick, an oncologist in Sydney, N.S., want provincial governments to establish regulations that would guide doctors who want to recycle unused prescription drugs that would otherwise be thrown out.

"I think it's a common sense issue where we could come up with common sense guidelines to direct this," Turnbull said.

Turnbull, who is nominated to become president of the Canadian Medical Association next year, gives the unused drugs to patients at an inner city health centre in Ottawa.

He said his patients include people who have lived on the streets for years, people who don't have a drug plan or who don't have a health card. The medication that is handed out is not yet expired.

"We make sure that they are the right medications and the right dose, that they haven't been opened and are completely new and sealed."

MacCormick, who works in an area of Cape Breton where there are high cancer rates and low incomes, said he completely supports the call for provincial regulations on the issue and the need to recycle prescription drugs.

"I would do whatever I could to get that drug into their hands and not let technical or technicalities get in the way of me getting that drug," he said.

In 37 U.S. states, unused prescription drugs are legally recycled. In Iowa, for example, there is a redistribution centre where unused prescription drugs are sorted and screened and then given to people in need.

David Freis of the Iowa Prescription Drug Corporation said the redistribution centre makes sense.

"We shipped out over $650,000 US worth of drugs to these clinics, which provide drugs to individuals. So a lot of pills got into people's mouths that would not have gotten in there without the program," he said.

But according to the Ontario College of Pharmacists, the Drug and Pharmacies Regulation Act prohibits the redispensing of drugs that have been returned to a pharmacy once the dispensed drug has left the pharmacy.

In a statement, the college said: "This protects the public from potential harm in receiving a drug that may have been tampered with or altered in some way, and is based on the premise that all patients — no matter what their financial status or abilities — deserve drugs that are of high quality; this cannot be assured where returned drugs are “recycled” or re-dispensed to patients."

Health Canada said the issue falls under the jurisdiction of the provinces and territories. The Food and Drugs Act applies to the sale of drug products, not the dispensing of them.

It said the dispensing of approved drugs donated by patients to a doctor or pharmacist would fall under the practice of medicine and pharmacy, which is the responsibility of the provinces and territories.