Ottawa's supervised injection site will have high-tech drug analyzing device

Ottawa’s first supervised injection site is now slated to have a high-tech device that can almost instantly analyze street drugs to stop overdoses before they happen and flag dangerous new drugs as they land on city streets.

It would be a first in Canada.

Lynne Leonard, a University of Ottawa epidemiologist, announced Thursday that her team has secured funding from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research to put a mass spectrometer at the site set to open this fall at the Sandy Hill Community Health Centre.

Leonard announced the funding to implement and evaluate the yet-to-be-purchased device to more than 100 people who’d gathered on Elgin Street to draw attention to the rising local toll of overdoses.

The machines retail for about $100,000 but Leonard said she hopes to get a discount because of the potentially widespread application of the project, which has already attracted attention across Canada and internationally.

“The issue, from my point of view and why I’m so excited, is that people will be able to know the content and quality of their drugs before they use them,” Leonard said. “Naloxone is after the fact. This is before someone takes the drugs.”

The machine will be able to both identify drugs such as fentanyl, which has been found laced in street drugs and counterfeit prescription pills, and even-deadlier carfentanil, and measure the sample’s strength.

Medical staff can warn users but also liaise with agencies such as the RCMP when they detect novel designer drugs.

Research conducted when mobile mass spectrometers have been available — at music festivals, for example — shows that knowing what’s in their drugs changes users’ behaviours. They either don’t use it or take less, inject with a friend instead of alone and have naloxone on hand.

Leonard, who also directs a team researching HIV and hepatitis C — which continue to infect high numbers of local drug users — also hopes the additional service will draw more of them to health care services.

Rob Boyd, director of the Oasis program at the Sandy Hill Community Health Centre, said that the model of mass spectrometer being considered for purchase would give results in about a minute. Lab tests to identify drugs like those used by police after busts can take months.

“There would be a lot of interest across North America in this technology if we could demonstrate it was of benefit,” Boyd said. “Months is an awfully long time for a drug as toxic as carfentanil to be on the streets of Ottawa.”

The “crisis” posed by opioids is so acute that Boyd is in talks with Health Canada about the possibility of opening an interim program until the already-approved supervised injection site opens.

Boyd, along with drug users and their parents, a paramedic and public health physician, were among the slated speakers as local people joined their counterparts in more than 100 cities to mark International Overdose Awareness Day Thursday at the Canadian Tribute to Human Rights monument.

Event organizers said it was aimed at reducing the stigma of overdose deaths, especially for mourning friends and family, and spreading the message that those deaths are preventable.

“Efforts to date have not reduced the number of drug overdose deaths in Ottawa and there is an urgent need to scale up proven interventions to prevent needless overdose death and injury,” they said, adding that someone dies every 11 days in Ottawa from an overdose.

“This year’s event focuses on what is working and what more needs to be done.”

Mayor Jim Watson has been among the critics of an unauthorized pop-up supervised injection site in a Lowertown park, but organizers announced Wednesday night that they had averted their first overdose.

“Tonight Overdose Prevention Ottawa saved a life,” the group said on social media.

“After all the hard work, sleepless nights, endless days, and multiple criticisms from higher ups – we persevered and tonight brought someone deserving back from overdose.”

The group opened the tent site Friday, saying they couldn’t wait for an officially-sanctioned program to open in Sandy Hill.

Watson has said that organizers were “well-meaning” but that it wasn’t fair to the neighbourhood to have its community park, used by kids and next door to a community centre with a summer camp program, “taken over.”

OPO said it’s seeking skilled grief counsellors to support the team “who have just witnessed their first of many overdoses.”

By Megan Gillis
Source: Ottawa Citizen