Police have seized more than 1,300 pills since 2016
City police have been seizing pills and drug cocktails containing fentanyl in traces that are often only the size of a grain of salt.
“It’s that powerful,” said Supt. Dave Haye. “So it has to be put into substances.”
It’s sometimes mixed with a binding agent or with other drugs, such as cocaine or methamphetamine. So far this year, police believe it’s responsible for the death of one person in the city.
Since the beginning of 2016, officers have seized about 1,333 fentanyl pills and a small amount of fentanyl powder.
“We’re finding these cocktails,” Haye said. “So people really don’t know what they’re taking.”
The drug has typically flowed into Saskatoon from the west coast. Police aren’t seizing big shipments because Saskatoon is an “end user” of the substance, Haye said.
The drug is shipped into Canada as pure fentanyl powder, its precursors, or the different drugs that combine to form fentanyl.
When police make arrests, they’ve been wearing protective gear, such as gloves, eyewear and masks with carbon filters. Officers made 28 fentanyl-related arrests in 2016 and three so far this year.
Fentanyl overdoses killed 21 people in 2015 and five last year.
The Ministry of Justice has confirmed it is working with the Ministries of Health, Education, Advanced Education and Social Services, police services and health experts to create a task force to address drug misuse and overdose in Saskatchewan.
According to the justice ministry, the task force is in the “early planning stages,” which includes establishing its scope and mandate.
Adria Bosshart died on May 7, the day before her birthday, of a suspected fentanyl overdose. She was one of three people police believe overdosed on fentanyl that weekend. Her sister Kayla, grieving the loss of her younger sister, spoke to the StarPhoenix via email last month.
Adria had been openly using drugs — marijuana and MDMA, often referred to as ecstasy.
“She wanted to seek help and was always encouraged to do that from many different family members and had attended a recovery centre for youth in Prince Albert, which had kept her clean for a few months before she had relapsed,” Kayla wrote.
In the days before her death, she was looking for Molly, a form of MDMA. Kayla said she believes this is where the fentanyl traces her sister ingested would have come from.
She said Adria was at a gathering of people on May 7, and she doesn’t believe Adria knew any of them for longer than a month. It’s her understanding that some of the people with Adria that night didn’t seek help when she began to overdose, she wrote.
Adria died less than two blocks away from St. Paul’s Hospital.
“I’m just not sure what prevented Adria or them from seeking out medical help. A law just passed days before her death that promises to keep young people like them from having to testify etc. if there is a situation exactly like Adria’s,” Kayla wrote, noting her frustration.
“Maybe the message wasn’t made clear enough to them but it’s OK to seek medical help or just to call 911, if it means I could have at least spent time with her in the hospital before she was gone or she would have made a full recover(y) like the 4 others that night,” she added.
With the passage of Bill C-224, the Good Samaritan law, police responding to an overdose call won’t lay charges if drugs are found at the scene. Haye noted officers will seize the drugs, however.
Kayla said she has found peace in knowing her sister had so many people who loved her. Adria was laid to rest on May 13.
“(S)he would have been proud knowing that it was a beautiful service and myself and her friends all (have) such genuine, beautiful memories to share with everyone.”