As opioid use hits crisis levels, meth remains drug of choice

Even as Alberta grapples with the opioid crisis, meth remains an illicit drug of choice in Calgary — and the most commonly used drug at the city’s supervised consumption site.

The creation of the Safeworks site at the Sheldon Chumir Health Centre was driven by the opioid emergency and the hundreds of resulting overdose deaths.

However, the most recent statistics for the facility show that in March the most frequently-reported drug used by clients was meth/ crystal meth at 1,313 times, nearly double that of fentanyl, which was used 695 times. Clients may use more than one drug at a time.

Since the site launched at the end of October 2017, meth — a psychostimulant — has been the most prevalent drug used in each of its months of operation, ahead of the opioids fentanyl and heroin.

The 186 overdoses reversed at the facility through the end of March were all related to opioid use, however.

Claire O’Gorman, Safeworks’ program director, said there is still a significant public health benefit to providing a site for crystal meth use.

“We don’t know what’s in the drugs. The drugs that are out there in the drug market are so contaminated that even if someone comes in thinking they have one substance, it might be a very different substance,” O’Gorman said in an interview.

“The other piece is, these sites really offer an opportunity for all kinds of health benefits beyond overdose prevention. It allows people a safe hygienic space for people to use their substances that would perhaps be otherwise used publicly ... we’re preventing things like communicable diseases such as HIV and hepatitis C, we’re preventing things like abscesses and infections and bacterial infections.”

O’Gorman said meth has long been a popular drug in Alberta because it has historically been easier to access than opioids.

The Calgary Police Service made 833 seizures of meth in 2017, 15 per cent more than a year earlier and the highest amount of any drug.

The number of meth seizures in 2017 was 142 per cent higher than the five-year average, while the seizures of all other drugs came in lower than the five-year average.

“It’s cheaper than most other drugs ... because it’s manufactured relatively simply compared to all the other drugs,” Staff Sgt. Kyle Grant, with the Calgary Police’s strategic enforcement unit, said. “With the production of meth and the high that it produces, that is now the drug of choice.”

There are clear benefits to crystal meth users being able to access the supervised consumption facility, said Grant.

“Obviously the chance of a medical emergency is quite high with all drug use, so if medical professionals can intervene, it’s giving those people another chance to figure out this is not for them,” he said.