ABSTRACT
The executive’s role in the restricted patient system was legislatively mandated on the basis of protecting the public. Yet, as we have seen, the choice to prioritize public protection over all other objectives in the system was the result of both implicit assumptions and explicit policies of those exercising the executive’s discretion. Above all, the executive’s approach to the restricted patient system was based upon the presumption that preventing risk to the public could be ‘grounded in notions of social protection and medical paternalism’ (Richardson 2007: 76). The belief that other actors in the system did not share this concern for public protection only strengthened the priority that executive decision-makers put upon it.
