Big Valley Jamboree to permit naloxone kits in main stage area

Big Valley Jamboree festival organizers will allow country music fans to bring naloxone kits into the main stage bowl as long as they are properly marked to allow security staff to easily identify the life-saving drug.

The decision to allow partygoers headed for Alberta’s biggest country music festival in Camrose to bring private kits with them into the main stage area is in line with an Alberta Health Service recommendation that anyone attending events who is thinking about using drugs should carry a naloxone kit with them.

Recreational drugs like cocaine and other stimulants have been found to be laced with deadly opioids like fentanyl, carfentanil and W-18, and with the province experiencing a high rate of overdoserelated deaths, organizers say it just makes sense to allow people to have access to naloxone kits.

“We just see it as a way for people to protect themselves,” festival producer Mike Anderson said Thursday.

Anderson said all primary and advanced care paramedics are authorized to use naloxone and the festival has additional doctors in attendance this year.

Naloxone will be available at the main clinic, the concert bowl tent and the south field clinic.

All Camrose Police Service members have been issued naloxone nasal kits.

Gates officially opened to the public Wednesday morning, with up to 25,000 revellers expected in the main stage area each day of the festival.

In the first three months of this year, Alberta saw 120 fentanyl-related deaths, up significantly from the same period in 2016 when 70 deaths were recorded. In total, 363 Albertans lost their lives to fentanyl-related overdoses in 2016.

Big Valley’s decision to allow the kits onto its grounds runs counter to the decision by the Chasing Summer music festival in Calgary, which warned attendees to leave their private kits at home.