Study shows prevalence of tainted street drugs

Advocates want province to distribute safer substances in light of new findings

Advocates for people who use drugs say new research showing an overwhelmingly tainted street-drug supply proves the dire need for government to crush the deadly illicit market by distributing safer substances.

Preliminary results from a pilot study by the B.C. Centre on Substance Use released Thursday show that people who brought street drugs into two supervised-consumption sites for testing had often been deceived about their purchases. Using a spectrometer and fentanyl test strips, researchers examined 1,714 samples over six months and found that just 39 per cent contained what the buyer thought they had been sold.

According to the researchers, only 19 per cent of samples sold as an opioid contained the expected substance and 88 per cent had fentanyl, while 89 per cent of samples sold as a stimulant contained the expected substance and five per cent had fentanyl. Only 13 per cent of samples sold as heroin actually contained heroin.

The results come a week after the B.C. Coroners Service reported that 161 people died of a suspected illicit-drug overdose in March, the second deadliest month since record keeping began. Fentanyl has been detected in about 83 per cent of 391 drug deaths in the first quarter of 2018, the coroners said. It has been two years since B.C. declared a public-health emergency due to increased overdoses, which last year took 1,448 lives.

Jordan Westfall, president of the Canadian Association of People Who Use Drugs, said the pilot study shows the pressing need for safer drugs.

“It’s very clear right now that people are dying because of a contaminated drug supply — ‘fent-inall,’ so to speak,” he said. “It just reaffirms again and again that we need to do something completely different. Otherwise, thousands more people are going to die.”

Westfall said it’s unclear whether the information presented in the study will have an effect on where people buy drugs. Because the supply chain is illicit and unregulated, the street-level dealer may not have been the person who cut the drug with another substance, he said.

He said there is hope for change with evidence-based treatments such as the B.C. Centre for Disease Control’s hydromorphone-pill pilot project. But he said key to stymying the overdose crisis is ensuring people have access to safer substances, which includes expanding opioid-dependency treatment beyond methadone and Suboxone.

It’s very clear right now that people are dying because of a contaminated drug supply — ‘fent-in-all,’ so to speak. It just reaffirms ... that we need to do something completely different. Otherwise, thousands more people are going to die.