In this special report, Adam Zivo details how drugs handed out for free are being sold on the black market to fund fentanyl addictions.
According to Meldon Kahan, medical director of the substance use service at Women’s College Hospital in Toronto, methadone diversion can be as dangerous as the diversion of safer supply drugs.
Canadian safer supply recipients are generally not required to consume their drugs under supervision and are free to take their drugs home. Few, if any, accountability measures guarantee that at-home consumption actually happens. In cities where safer supply programs are active, experts say that the street price of hydromorphone has plummeted, suggesting an avalanche of new supply.
Dr. Indigo, an addiction physician from Ottawa, said that before safer supply launched in that city, most opioid diversion involved Hydromorph Contin — a long-acting version of hydromorphone. Dr. Indigo estimated that 24-mg capsules of the drug, which were likely originally prescribed for pain relief, would sell for between $20 and $30.
The Toronto Police Service vaguely answered: “It’s possible that street prices have dropped recently, but we wouldn’t be able to say with any certainty that it’s related to the safer supply diversion.” Collapsing prices would be unsurprising considering the astonishing number of pills being distributed. Several physicians claimed that safer supply patients were receiving upwards of 20-30 tablets a day.published by the Parkdale Queen West Community Health Centre in Toronto, which states that patients may receive up to 24 8-mg hydromorphone tablets daily.
Dr. Red also noted that, “I have patients who actually work in the DTES and report that they see it happening. We see people driving down to the corner of Main and Hastings, obviously not locals, exchanging money for tablets.” When Dr. Green prescribed hydromorphone to an opioid addict for the first and only time, the patient returned two weeks later with an inexplicable $200 in his wallet. The doctor ordered a urine test, which showed no hydromorphone in his system.
Individuals seeking hydromorphone have allegedly gone to Ontario pharmacies and, in the process of explaining what drug they want, presented pharmacists with packages of prescription hydromorphone. The pharmacists then noticed that the individuals’ names didn’t match the prescriptions attached to the packages and were able to trace them back to Dr. Violet’s clinic.
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