The North Bay Police Service says it is planning to create an awareness day to try and helped educate the public about the continuing dangers of Fentanyl.
“We want to educate people as much as we can, so what we are hoping to do in February is hold an awareness day on Fentanyl and other dangerous chemicals that are in our community and bring all the service providers across the North Bay and Callander communities into North Bay and into the police building and do a presentation of what Fentanyl is and the dangers of it,” said Deputy Chief Scott Tod.
The Fentanyl problem is moving across the country and even in Toronto politicians and public health officials are meeting to tackle the problem.
See that story here: Officials meet in Toronto to tackle fentanyl issues
“It’s in our community and we know that but what we’ve done is we’ve educated our officers internally on the dangers of Fentanyl when we are handling it, either through seizure or as an exhibit through court,” said Tod.
Police in North Bay made five seizures of the drug late in 2016.
“Five seizures of Fentanyl in 2016 and that is a bit concerning because it was in the latter portion of 2016 which goes in line with what many other police services across Ontario are experiencing, that this has been a recent phenomenon that’s occurring in many of our communities,” said Tod.
Fentanyl is a powerful painkiller roughly 100 times more potent than morphine that produces a drug high but also depresses the body's rate of respiration, which may cause the user to stop breathing.
A dose of just two milligrams of pure fentanyl — the weight of about seven poppy seeds — can be lethal.
Police have said many people are ingesting it unknowingly as the drug, which cannot be seen, smelled or tasted, is difficult to detect when laced into other drugs.
“We are able to do a lot more work with identifying it in our community, seizing it and trying to work on who is bringing those dangerous chemicals into our community,” added Tod.
