Animal sedatives being mixed with street drugs

Director at harm reduction agency warns powerful substance can lead to overdoses

A powerful veterinary surgical anesthetic that has been detected in the street drug supply in Toronto hasn't yet been found in Windsor, but officials are warning it could make its way down the 401.

Windsor Police Service raised the alarm recently about the unregulated drugs medetomidine and dexmedetomidine, saying on social media, “there has been a high number of reported overdoses across Ontario.”

Local police officials were not available to speak with the Star about the drug but the executive director of Pozitive Pathways Community Services, Michael Brennan, explained the drug could be making its way into the local market.

“It's not always a matter of if — it's always a matter of when,” Brennan said.

Medetomidine is used to sedate animals, while dexmedetomidine is approved for both humans and animals, to induce sedation and muscle relaxation.

“Often times, the drug dealers themselves mix these (substances) with other street drugs or fentanyl for example, to provide legs, or as they say, more lasting effects in many cases,” said Brennan, whose agency provides client advocacy and services for people living with, affected by or at-risk of HIV, hepatitis C and other sexually transmitted blood-borne infections.

“Back in the day ... (the '70s, '80s, '90s) people who used opioids or used heroin — when you use heroin, it usually had a long duration effect,” he added. “Today's drugs can give you the same kind of euphoric feeling but the arch of getting high and having it subside is much faster.”

Brennan said this leads people to try to find more and more drugs all the time.

“Thus we have the cycle of drugs that are always being cut and recut and distributed out into the community,” he said.

Brennan said drug toxicity is not new but money needs to be spent on equipment that would allow quick identification.

“Our community continues to have a limited community-based response to identifying what those substances are,” he said. “Fentanyl, of course we have fentanyl testing strips that are here. But that continues to not be a comprehensive response.”

What would help?

Funding for the supervised consumption site in Windsor, Brennan said.

“Should the funding come through — that provides the facilitators of the consumption site to be able to purchase something like a spectrometer that can assist with testing a larger range of substances that are in the drug supply,” he said.

“And then you can inform the service user what is actually in their substance and how toxic is it and what could the impacts be if they use it.

“We continue to want to look at drug policy changes in Canada that would allow greater regulation over the drug supply and allow for accessibility to a safe drug supply.

“If that doesn't happen, we're going to continue to see these drugs being cut more and more with other toxic medications and you're going to continue to see overdoses,” Brennan added.

“You're going to continue to see our emergency rooms being clogged unnecessarily with the impact of that.”