A Winnipeg harm reduction and public health service is now the second place in the city for people to test what’s in their drugs.
Street Connections, run by the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority, provides supports including safer drug use and sex supplies, mobile nursing services and counselling. Starting this week, people who come to their headquarters at 496 Hargrave St. can run their drugs through a machine that will tell public health nurses the components of the drug and flag potentially dangerous additives.
The service — offered Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays from 1 to 3:30 p.m. — uses a fourier transform infrared spectrometer, the same machine installed in non-profit organization Sunshine House’s mobile overdose prevention site, named MOPS.
Like inside the Sunshine House RV, the service is legal and confidential. Unlike Sunshine House, people coming to check drugs are not allowed to use at Street Connections.
Both Sunshine House and Street Connections will use data from the drug machines to determine whether alerts are sent out to the public about additives or fentanyl in drugs.
People were already making use of the new service Friday afternoon, while others visiting Street Connections came to pick up clean needles, pipes and other drug use supplies. Signage on the walls encouraged people to get their drugs tested and provided tips for safe and reliable checking. One sign warned of the “chocolate chip cookie effect” — comparing fentanyl and other additives to chocolate chips in a cookie — and asked users to mix their samples before bringing them for testing.
A spokesperson with the WRHA declined an interview Friday, noting the service was in its early stages.
The service is part of the NDP government’s promise to purchase two drug-testing machines though a Health Canada exemption. The location of another Winnipeg site has not been revealed, but Addictions Minister Bernadette Smith told the Free Press plans are already underway for the province to acquire more drug-testing machines, with one going to a community in southern Manitoba and the other up north.
Street Connections’ most recent drug alert was in The Pas on Monday and warned recently-seized drugs were tested and contained veterinary tranquilizers resistant to naloxone and fentanyl.
Davey Cole, the co-ordinator of Sunshine House’s mobile overdose prevention site, said the organization consulted with the WRHA, and both groups had received insight from the British Columbia Centre on Substance Use, which offers training for drug checking.
“It’s exciting, honestly. The more spaces people can go to get their drugs checked, and the more conversations people are having about taking drugs, that’s changing the way people use,” Cole said Friday.
Around 250 people a day are visiting MOPS this summer, and staff are making stops at encampments to check in on people.
This year, a prevalent issue facing people visiting the mobile site has been trouble with wound care — the season has been especially rainy, creating more risk for open injuries to get infected or heal poorly.
“We’ve been talking with mobile outreach folks and nurses on how to make wound care more accessible,” Cole said. “I think there might be some clinics coming up or that kind of thing that’ll be more mobile for folks to be able to check in.”
There were 33 substance-related deaths in Manitoba in February, according to the most recent preliminary data provided by the office of the chief medical examiner. There were 56 in January.
There were a record high 445 drug-related deaths in 2023.
malak.abas@freepress.mb.ca
Malak Abas
Reporter
Malak Abas is a city reporter at the Free Press. Born and raised in Winnipeg’s North End, she led the campus paper at the University of Manitoba before joining the Free Press in 2020. Read more about Malak.
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