Drug-test device could root out hidden killers
Injection site could use technology to check for substances such as fentanyl
Ottawa’s first supervised injection site could include a machine that instantly checks street drugs for deadly hidden substances, such as fentanyl.
Lynne Leonard, an assistant professor and research scientist at the University of Ottawa, has submitted a research funding proposal to the Canadian Institutes of Health Research to evaluate the technology.
“What we’re seeing right now, I think, are responses to overdoses after the overdose has happened,” Leonard said.
“What I’m interested in is trying to prevent the overdoses before they happen.”
Leonard said spectrometer machines have been used at music festivals in the United States.
The machine can reveal the quality of the drug and if it’s laced with other substances.
The new machines can provide results within minutes and tell users what they would be consuming, Leonard said.
Just as important, the public health unit would be able to quickly send out warnings about bad drugs on the streets based on tested samples.
“Our plan is to purchase advertising time on Facebook so we can get warnings out really quickly with a webpage,” Leonard said.
The Sandy Hill Community Health Centre has submitted an application to the federal government to open a supervised injection site at its Nelson Street building.
The drug-testing service could complement the harm-reduction program at the health centre.
Leonard said her research would see if people are interested in using the drug-testing machine and examine the impact on existing harm-reduction services.
She said there is an agreement with Carleton University to help guide the purchase of the machine and the training for people using it.
The biggest threat in Ottawa’s drug scene is fentanyl.
“What’s happening now is, because it’s cheaper than heroin and cheaper than cocaine, it’s being mixed with those drugs to make better profit for the drug dealers,” Leonard said.
There have also been phoney oxycontin pills containing fentanyl, Leonard said. The highly potent carfentanil, which is 10,000 times more toxic than morphine, hasn’t shown up in Leonard’s drug research, “but I think it’s only a matter of time,” she said.
Ottawa Public Health, the AIDS Committee of Ottawa, Sandy Hill Community Health Centre and Somerset West Community Health Centre are collaborators in the drug-testing proposal.
Caleb Chepesiuk, harm reduction co-ordinator at the AIDS Committee of Ottawa, said there’s a growing worry about what’s in Ottawa’s street drugs.
“People have been concerned about the quality of their drugs,” Chepesiuk said. “These are interventions that we can put into place that would reduce a lot of those extreme risks and adverse health effects that we have been seeing and are seeing in greater numbers now.”
The AIDS committee offers a paywhat-you-can kit for people to test their drugs. A drop of a solution on the drug can expose unknown substances, based on the change in colour. The organization started offering the kits last fall after a pilot project. About 40 people have picked up kits to test drugs like cocaine, speed, MDMA and crystal meth, Chepesiuk said.
Chepesiuk said it’s a simple “presumptive” test with many limitations — it doesn’t work well with opioids, he said — but a high-power drug-testing machine would reveal the strength and the purity of a sample, in addition to what’s actually in it.
The cost of the machine depends on the type of results and speed of results required. Chepesiuk said a machine can range between $30,000 and $100,000.
Rob Boyd, director of harm reduction services at the Sandy Hill Community Health Centre, said the proposal to acquire a drug-testing machine is mentioned in the centre’s supervised injection site application to Health Canada.
What I’m interested in is trying to prevent the overdoses before they happen.