Hamilton Public Health Services issues drug alert after numerous poisonings

A shocking new report from Hamilton City Hall says emergency services have responded to a record-breaking amount of drug overdose calls this month and are warning of a poisoned drug supply causing unusual and severe symptoms, leaving people unconscious and unable to breathe.

Forty-three emergency calls were made between June 30 and July 6 which is the most calls made in a week since 2016.

This follows closely behind two weeks in May and June that saw 32 and 34 calls.

“There is likely a lot of contamination that’s happening with substances causing some of the unusual responses that we’re hearing from community partners,” says Sharalyn Penner-Cloutier the Manager of Mental Well-Being and Substance Abuse for the City of Hamilton.

The city says it’s seen a spike in drug poisonings this summer as well when opioids or other drugs are mixed with different, potentially dangerous additives. This causes users to fall unconscious for prolonged periods, seizures, inability to breathe, and most concerning, overdoses requiring more than four doses of naloxone.

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“That’s very concerning to us because we know that naloxone works very well for opioid-overdoses, however, with these additives there are added concerns, some of them might cause respiratory depression,” Penner-Cloutier says.

“Police services do a good job in terms of large seizures, and so what’s happened is the change in drug supply. When there’s a shortage, they change what the drugs are cut with, and the cutting agents are getting increasingly more dangerous,” says Jennifer Bonner, the Executive Director of The Hub.

“So we’re seeing a significant amount of overdoses, because it’s products people are not used to as well.”

Bonner is the executive director of The Hub; an outreach service for people dealing with homelessness and addiction.

She’s seeing a spike in overdoses as well and believes the numbers are actually much higher than reported.

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“For every four overdoses that we see in the community, an ambulance is probably only responding once,” Bonner says.

Bonner points to the closure of safe consumption sites across the province leading to the spike.

Hamilton’s only site was forced to shut its doors in response to a new Ford government law that sites couldn’t be within half a kilometer of schools or child care centres.

“The biggest concern is that people don’t have anywhere to test their supplies anymore,” Bonner says.

The City of Hamilton currently provides drug testing strips through community partners, and The Hub is looking to provide them by the fall.

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