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More timely and detailed information could help officials bring overdose kits and education campaigns to neighbourhoods and even schools experiencing overdose clusters, he said, as well as offering a more accurate look at the scope of the problem and trends.

“Time is of the essence… this is not something that we can take months to respond to. If it is happening today we want to be able to plan the intervention.”

Not only is synthetic fentanyl more dangerous than pharmaceutical fentanyl — because it can be more concentrated and deadly — but Boyd noted that powdered fentanyl is also being mixed with cocaine and sold in Ottawa. Health Canada recently confirmed that, according to Ottawa Police. Police also warn that naloxone, which is in overdose kits, is less effective against high doses of drugs such as heroin and fentanyl.

Boyd fears one aspect of the provincial strategy could contribute to more opioid overdoses and deaths. Plans to delist the highest strength opioid formulas could cause people currently on them to shift to illegal fentanyl, he fears. As of January in Ontario 13,832 people were on high doses of opioids.

“It is a very dangerous strategy to do that.”

It would be better to scale up addiction treatment programs first and give people taking those high doses time to taper slowly off the drugs, said Boyd.

Sandy Hill’s Oasis program has had to buy its own overdose kits in the past because of provincial regulations that limited them to certain organizations. Expanding access to naloxone is part of the provincial strategy. The kits offer two doses of naloxone as an antidote to opioid overdose, but Boyd said those two doses are not always enough to combat the powdered fentanyl now in Ottawa.