2023-07-26 04:02:47
“In twenty-five years of heroin, I have never overdosed. In three months of fentanyl, I’ve already done three. » Leaning on the lid of a garbage can in downtown Montreal, Eric Talon takes a box out of his pocket. Inside, a crumbly blue pebble, the most common form of fentanyl sold on Canadian streets.
Like hundreds of other Montreal consumers, the waxy-skinned 50-year-old has become accustomed to this synthetic drug, and its danger. “Every day someone I know dies from it”, mutters, the look lost, the one whose companion died of an overdose, in the spring. Fentanyl, mixed with other narcotics, has been responsible for fourteen deaths per month in Montreal since 1is January. The number of non-fatal overdoses recorded in recent weeks has doubled compared to 2022.
Forty to fifty times more powerful than heroin, the opioid wreaks havoc in North America, from Vancouver on the Canadian Pacific coast to Philadelphia on the East Coast of the United States. Montreal, where cocaine was until recently in a dominant position because of its local quality, is the last of the major Canadian cities to see skyrocketing consumption of fentanyl. The first waves of overdoses were observed there in 2014, in the working-class neighborhood of Hochelaga. Since then, the opioid has seen its use increase, in particular thanks to the health crisis. “The year 2020, with the arrival of Covid-19, was a real breaking point”believes Jean-Sébastien Fallu, researcher at the University of Montreal, specialist in drug addiction.
Business closures and rising rents have thrown growing numbers of people homeless. The heroin shortage at the start of the pandemic also pushed some users towards this supermorphine. Many homeless people are easily caught up in the consumption of this new wave of narcotics, which are more addictive than comparable products in circulation until now.
Other factors are more unexpected, linked to public measures against drugs. “National prohibition policies have swept heroin off the sales map”paving the way for fentanyl, recalls Mr. Fallu, who believes that heroin had, basically, “protect Montreal from the wave of synthetic opioids”. Since then, fentanyl has been synthesized in local clandestine laboratories. On the street, at an equivalent dose, it is a third cheaper than heroin. “When there is more than that at hand, precarious consumers rely on it [à cette substance] »says Jean-François Mary, Executive Director of Cactus, one of the oldest community programs supporting drug users in Quebec.
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