It’s our fentanyl crisis, too

An amount the size of a grain of salt will take you from high to dead.

That’s the enormous danger of the ultra-potent painkiller drug called fentanyl, described by Waterloo Regional Police Chief Bryan Larkin as a “tidal wave.”

It’s an opioid, often imported from China. Tiny amounts are hidden in small packages, then mixed with heroin and cocaine.

So when addicts buy street drugs, looking for that numb feeling that is craved by so many people in physical and psychological pain, they’re playing Russian roulette with their own lives.

Overdose and death has reached crisis levels, especially in British Columbia, where 914 people died of overdose last year.

But Waterloo Region has had more than its share of tragedy, too. According to the excellent reporting on this issue by my colleagues Liz Monteiro and Anam Latif, this crisis now claims more lives than car accidents in our community. Twenty-six people died last year.

Local police made 12 seizures of fentanyl in 2015. That number soared to 69 in 2016, outpacing Ottawa and Hamilton. Local paramedics used to respond to one opioid overdose a week. Now, it’s nearly two a day.

Kitchener Mayor Berry Vrbanovic did the right thing by asking to join a task force of mayors from across Canada, tackling this issue. They’ll share best practices and try to co-ordinate a national response.

On Friday there will be a conference call with the federal ministers of health and public safety, Jane Philpott and Ralph Goodale. A look at the subjects to be discussed gives a hint of the massive, complex knot of problems that lie behind any addiction. They will include:

Access to treatment, including kits with the life-saving antidote naloxone. Opioid addiction sometimes happens to people who get prescriptions for physical pain. Other times, it happens to people who are in mental pain. Both groups crave the blissful numbness that the drugs deliver.

But treatment for any addiction means more than helping the person stop. It won’t be effective, long term, unless it addresses underlying problems. That could require supportive housing and mentalhealth services. It’s all expensive.

A national overdose registry, so that experts can understand the scope of the crisis.

A discussion of how we can keep these drugs out of Canada. Fentanyl is so powerful that half a dozen tablets can represent 2,000 doses. That’s easy to hide in a tiny container, inside an officiallooking box of urine test strips.

Canada’s customs officials catch many illegal shipments. But they aren’t allowed to open a package smaller than 30 grams without the sender’s permission. That rule allows a lot of these drugs to get

through. Perhaps it should be changed.

A discussion about creating safe, supervised places where people can take their drugs. Trained workers would be there, ready to intervene if there’s an overdose. Under existing law, each new site must be individually approved by Health Canada. But that rule may now have to be ditched.

This crisis is moving very quickly. It’s stressful to learn about it, and it is stressful for professionals to keep up. It’s important, as we move forward, to remind ourselves that people with addictions need our compassion, not our contempt.

“These people are somebody’s son and daughter,” Vrbanovic said.