Fentanyl found in drugs at safe sites

Almost 80 per cent of street drugs tested for fentanyl at a Vancouver safe-injection site were laced with the potentially deadly opioid, a nine-month pilot study has found.

The study, presented Monday at the 25th Harm Reduction International conference in Montreal, found more than 80 per cent of the heroin and crystal meth and about 40 per cent of the cocaine brought into Insite by clients contained illicit fentanyl.

In all, more than 1,000 drug samples — the vast majority of them heroin — were tested between July 2016 and March 2017 at the Downtown Eastside supervised injection centre using specialized strips that detect the presence of fentanyl.

“Clients at Insite were able to use the results from the drugchecking service to reduce their dose and decrease their risk of overdose,” said lead researcher Dr. Mark Lysyshyn, medical health officer for Vancouver Coastal Health.

“If drug checking can help clients at a supervised injection site like Insite where nobody has ever died from an overdose, imagine how much it could help people in places without these life-saving programs.”

In B.C. alone, more than 900 people died of apparent illicit drug overdoses in 2016, with about 60 per cent of the deaths linked to illicitly manufactured fentanyl. The synthetic opioid is 100 times more toxic than morphine.

Over the study period, Insite clients were asked if they wanted their drugs tested for fentanyl, said Lysyshyn, who estimated that about five of the roughly 600 daily visitors accepted the researchers’ offer.

Of all the drugs checked, almost 80 per cent were heroin, while crystal meth represented 7.2 per cent of the drugs and cocaine made up 5.3 per cent. About 38 per cent of testing was performed pre-consumption and the remainder post-consumption by analyzing traces of the drugs left in “cookers” used by clients to prepare their injections.

Testing is done with strips designed to detect fentanyl in urine. But the B.C. researchers used the highly sensitive strips to test for the potent opioid by mixing a drug sample with water.

The results of the study need to be interpreted with caution, Lysyshyn said.

“It’s not saying 80 per cent of the heroin on the streets of Vancouver is contaminated. It may be, but this could be an overestimation of that based on the fact that people are more likely to check what they think are contaminated drugs.”

Rick Lines, executive director of Harm Reduction International, said the study “proves that the alarm bells that have been sounding over this public health emergency are fully warranted.”

“Street drugs are costing lives and this research confirms what we’ve long known — that supervised injection sites and drug checking can prevent unnecessary deaths.