The program works like its name suggests: Patch-For-Patch.

Patients with a prescription for the painkiller patch Fentanyl must return their used but untampered prescriptions to receive a refill.

But in a region hit hard by addiction to opioids such as Fentanyl — a narcotic that keeps popping up in drug raids and a likely target in last month’s rash of drugstore robberies — it doesn’t always go so smooth.

At one area pharmacy, a customer tried to trade a stolen nicotine patch for a new prescription.

Another turned in a piece of packing tape with a design imprint meant to look like stamp on a Fentanyl patch. That’s a common one actually

“I think we did fall for that a couple of times,” said Drew Peddie, a pharmacist at Shoppers Drug Mart stores in St. Thomas and Strathroy.

“We had another patient cutting the patches in half, then piecing them back together. I’m sure they got away with it for a while, then we called the police.”

In London alone last month, six pharmacies were robbed for narcotics — a spike from the typical one or two pharmacy robberies in the city for the past 11 months. In January 2015, the city experienced the same spike, though numbers varied between one and two per month for the previous three years.

It’s now routine for Fentanyl patches to be found when police search the homes of suspected drug traffickers, police say.

Fentanyl is blamed for at least 655 deaths in Canada between 2009 and 2013, and 36 in London and Middlesex alone during the same time period.

Fentanyl usually comes in transdermal patches that slowly release 72 hours worth of medication through the skin. But after that, the drug can still be scraped off, melted or otherwise broken down to be injected, snorted or smoked, which is what happens when used patches are diverted to the street.

“The problem . . . is there are people out there, who are selling a product people become addicted to profiting off the pain of other people. Then there are people so highly addicted, they’ll do anything to get their hands on it,” Peddie said. “Fentanyl is highly addictive and its becoming the drug of choice.”

London police and area OPP support Patch-For-Patch — expected to become law soon under Bill 33, after being passed by the Ontario legislature late last year — as one way to curb the widespread abuse of the addictive opioid pain killer that became popular with users after OxyContin was taken off the market.

“We are representative of the rest of the province and the country of the use and abuse of Fentanyl,” said London Staff Sgt. Henry Pateman, in charge of the auxiliary officers who have been helping roll out the program at city pharmacies. “It’s always been out there, but the criminal misuse of it is becoming more predominant.”

While crystal methamphetamine seems to be wreaking the most havoc on addicts in London, abuse of Fentanyl is an ongoing issue, and one garnering headlines across the country after a rash of overdose deaths out West.

“Six or seven years ago, we didn’t see a Fentanyl patch, but in the last five years with the opioid addiction we are seeing a huge increase,” said Sgt. Chris Auger with the OPP Drug Enforcement Unit based in London.

“We had people hooked on (Oxycontin) — and they changed the recipe for Oxy and it led to Fentanyl.”

In London, drug workers have seen another trend coming off the changed recipe for Oxycontin: A dramatic increase in crystal methamphetamine use. Though that synthetic drug has the opposite effect of an opioid, it is much cheaper and easier to find than Fentanyl, encouraging many addicts to take it.

Launched in North Bay, then made into a private member’s bill by Progressive Conservative MPP Vic Fedeli, patch-for-patch started rolling out in London last fall. Pharmacies in Strathroy and St. Thomas have been on board for nearly a year, and since last fall, auxiliary police have been visiting London pharmacies to educate staff on the program.

Peddie joined patch-for-patch a year ago and said it opened his eyes to the rampant abuse of Fentanyl.

“I always felt like Fentanyl was a pretty good option out there. Once we went with the P4P (Patch for Patch) program, and started seeing the amount of diversion and manipulation of the patches, I was surprised at how much more of it was happening than I thought. It took a month before we started to catch on. I never suspected this person was a problem or that person had a problem,” he said.

“We were getting one or two a week.”

jennifer.obrien@sunmedia.ca

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