The North Bay Police Service and the Drug Strategy Committee have been advised by the Toronto Drug Checking Unit that there is an emerging trend of unregulated opioid supply in our province that is stronger than fentanyl and that includes North Bay.
Police have identified two “new” nitazene opioids in Toronto’s unregulated opioid supply. N-desethyl etonitzene is considered to be 10 times stronger than fentanyl, and Protonitazepyne is considered to be more than 20 times stronger than fentanyl.
"The Drug Strategy Committee presented a drug alert warning," Sgt Brad Reaume of the North Bay Police Service, Criminal Investigations Street Crime Unit said during a media conference at North Bay Police Headquarters on Monday morning.
"The Police Service shares a responsibility I believe anyway to its community but to the users inside the community that when we receive knowledge of concerning drugs or concerning trends inside of the community, that we report them properly. So the users can be aware of what is happening - if they recognize any adverse effects from the drugs that they are using, they should be concerned about it and know what is happening to them."
According to the North Bay Parry Sound District Health Unit, there have been 34 overdoses in 2024 and 2 overdose deaths in the Nipissing region.
Reaume also showed the media how some of these street drugs are made using coffee grounds representing fentanyl, and salt representing the cutting agent.
"It is not produced properly," explains Reaume.
"Right here as this being an example, it is very crude but the brown portion of this substance would represent pure fentanyl, so the very concentrated fentanyl.
"Everything in the background is going to represent the cutting agent so your benzodiazepine, your caffeine, your baking soda, flour, whatever they are mixing it with at the time, and it is not distributed evenly across the sample.
"As it is packaged, it is going to contain concentrated portions, and less concentrated portions - hot spots to average type of use. So anything in this concentrated area is going to cause an overdose, or a significant reaction. and quite a bit of a difference from this portion."
Reaume hopes this awareness of the problem will help in some fashion to bring those overdose numbers down.
