Workers on the front lines of Ottawa's opioid crisis say allowing drug users to consume drugs at supervised injection sites is not enough to prevent overdose deaths — so they are going one step further.
Ottawa Inner City Health began providing a small group of users with "clean" drugs in September following a rapid rise in the number of overdoses from street drugs contaminated with fentanyl over the summer.
"They're bringing in drugs that are laced with fentanyl, so the thought would be, if we're going to have supervised safe drug injection sites, why would we allow them to still inject poison?" said Dr. Jeff Turnbull, the chief physician for Ottawa Inner City Health, which provides health care to the homeless.
"Why would we not allow them to inject pharmaceutical-grade medications?"
Seven patients began receiving a combination of oral and intravenous doses of the painkiller hydromorphone, or Dilaudid, last month, and Turnbull wants to increase that to 40 users over the next month.
