Canadian pharmacy to offer fentanyl test kit
A pharmacy in Winnipeg, Manitoba, will soon sell cheap tests to assist drug users in finding out whether or not their wares are spiked with fentanyl. The drug, 100 times more powerful than morphine, has been wreaking havoc on communities across Canada and the United States.
In what has been dubbed a "disaster" in Canada, deaths due to fentanyl ingestion are on the rise. The drug is traditionally found in counterfeit painkillers and in bags of heroin, where it is mixed in to give the product a stronger kick. But according to Michael Watts, the owner and manager of Brothers Pharmacy in Winnipeg, fentanyl is also being found in non-opioid street drugs.
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"One of the problems I've seen is people get addicted to opiates without knowing they're taking opiates," Watts told CBC. "A lot of the dealers will lace cocaine, lace marijuana with fentanyl powder. Then all of a sudden the person becomes to addicted to opiates without knowingly taking an opiate."
Watts said he heard about other provinces offering fentanyl tests for users and decided to look into it for his own pharmacy. "The kits are really hard to come by in Manitoba. Not many people knew anything about it," he said. "We called around to Ontario and B.C. [British Columbia]. Finally we found a company that can supply the strips to us." The strips cost $5 and test for fentanyl contamination.
More about the deadly opiate
The tests will provide a necessary service for the province's drug users. A recent study by Vancouver Coastal Health showed that 86 percent of street drugs tested at Insite, a supervised injection site, tested positive for fentanyl. "We've been telling them, 'Fentanyl is on the street. Be careful,' but they don't necessarily have a sense of, 'Well, what about the drugs I'm taking?'" Mark Lysyshyn, a medical health officer with Vancouver Coastal Health, told CBC. "We track whether [drugs are] positive or negative [for fentanyl] and then we post it on posters so even people who don't check their drugs can get the information."
Lysyshyn added that the fentanyl tests Brothers Pharmacy are using do have limitations — they only work on street drugs that are water soluble, for instance — and that health officials are still investigating how accurate they are. But Watts maintained that his pharmacy's $5 test is simply a starting point. "We're actively searching for a test that will test a wider range of drugs," he said.
The post Canadian Pharmacy To Offer Fentanyl Test Kit appeared first on Vocativ.
