Drug checking finds fentanyl, other substances in Vancouver street drugs
VANCOUVER — Street drugs in Vancouver are often not as advertised, according to new data from a drug-checking program.
Initial results from the pilot project show that more than 60 per cent of the substances tested at two supervised consumption sites between November and April didn’t contain any of the drug that people had expected.
The findings were particularly stark when people brought in what they thought was heroin, with 88 per cent of those samples testing positive for the illicit opioid fentanyl, said Dr. Ken Tupper with the B.C. Centre on Substance Use.
“When people are buying these, particularly opioids, and they’re being told by their dealer that they’re getting heroin, they’re generally not,” he said. “In Vancouver, it seems like the heroin supply has very much been supplanted.”