If you’re a drug user, even a pot smoker, Alouette Addictions Services wants to see you.
It’s a matter of life and death.
As fentanyl, an artificial opiate, continues to kill people across Canada, Alouette Addictions is offering its Narcan overdose kit to anyone who wants one.
All it takes is an hour of training on Tuesday at 1 p.m. at the society’s offices on Lougheed Highway and 225th Street. People can show up or call ahead.
Annika Polegato, with Alouette Addictions, said police reports are showing many drugs are now being cut with fentanyl, a deadly painkiller that can be fatal in minute amounts, even through absorption through the skin.
Polegato has even heard reports of fentanyl being mixed with marijuana.
“You may think your a ‘casual pot smoker.’ The reality is that it’s possible that you could be getting fentanyl, and, so, I encourage anybody and everybody to come and get a kit.”
Alouette Addictions has always encouraged users to get a kit, “but the number of overdoses that were seeing in the community on a weekly basis is staggering.
“We’re really pushing … and we’re encouraging people … that are more of a recreational user, or [using] not such a strong drug, to still come in. You don’t know.”
The free kits are provided on a completely confidential basis, she added.
The Take Home Naloxone kit includes two syringes, two doses of naloxone, rubber gloves and a breathing tube.
The idea is to give them to friends or family of users so they’re handy if a drug user overdoses. Clients watch a video on how to administer the antidote before receiving the kits. If someone is overdosing, the naloxone can be injected into the major muscles right through clothing if necessary.
People should never use drugs alone.
Alouette Addictions has 15 kits in stock and another 20 on order. People who already have kits can come and have their supplies replenished.
In Metro Vancouver last month, 12 people have died from fentanyl overdoses.