Earlier this year, in October, Health Canada granted an exemption to the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act (CDSA), allowing DIY Community Health to run a drug checking service in Timmins. The aim of this initiative is to offer more accurate, community-specific data on the ongoing toxic drug crisis.
“Its a collaboration with the Ontario Drug Checking Community, which is really centralized in Toronto, but it is province-wide,” said Jason Sereda, president of DIY Community Health, in his interview with The Daily Press. “We can take the samples here in Timmins, and we send them to Toronto for that in-depth research analysis at their lab.”
According to Sereda, the analysis of the drug’s contents could be performed and sent back to the service within two to three days, enabling individuals to make more informed decisions about their drug use, or whether to use the drug at all. He also noted that this information also also helps service providers, including the health unit, EMS, and the hospital, to tailor programs and interventions that are better aligned with the community’s specific needs.
Moreover, he referenced the drug alerts issued by the Porcupine Health Unit and the Timmins and Area Drug Strategy (TADS) as a good example. The data used for these alerts mainly comes from southern Ontario. “By us offering this drug checking now right in Timmins, it will allow us to start creating that data set for our community that actually is more reflective of what the drugs are in our community,” said Sereda. “So again, it will allow policy makers, decision makers, leadership, front-line service workers, all of us, to then make better informed decisions around what type of interventions we do.”
Once launched, the service could be used to test a wide range of substances and paraphernalia. Ideally, a sample about the size of a matchhead should be collected, as this provides enough material for proper analysis. Article content
“But even though we could test anything, we’re really trying to focus on fentanyl or fentanyl-related, or that people suspect has fentanyl in it, because that’s really where the toxic drug crisis is centred right now,” Sereda added.
