Closed borders leading to more dangerous street drugs: OPP

Provincial police say the closure of the Canada-U.S. border during the COVID-19 pandemic has driven up the price of illicit street drugs and driven down the quality of what is beingsold in eastern Ontario.

Street-level dealers also seem to be stretching their supplies further,mixing dangerous drugs that can lead to irreversible overdoses, police say.

"We've seen our traffickers actual modify their ways of doing business," said OPP Det.Const.Daniel Dub of the major crime unit of the Ontario Provincial Police.

"They will stop [at]nothing,they will adjust."

Dub said that in the months since COVID-19 closed the borderbetween New York State and Quebec, the drug trade in eastern Ontario has had to adapt.

"They are motivated by money, by profit, and they will not slow down because of [the border] measures."

Last fall,a kilogram of cocaine could sell for between $45,000 and $50,000, he said.However, since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, the same quantity has tradedon the street for more than $70,000.

• Injection site scales back physical distancing rules to prevent ODs
• The fresh, young face of Ottawa's opioid tragedy

The pressure the pandemic has put on supply has lowered the quality of cocaine, he said, with the purity falling from 90 per centin pre-COVID times to70 per cent.

Collateral effects?

When drugs makeit to street level, the purity falls even more,said Dub.

Earlier this month, the Eastern Ontario Health Unit issued a warning about the prevalence of "purple heroin" in the Cornwall, Ont., area.

"People are desperate ...really taking whatever they can," said Dr. Paul Roumeliotis, medical officer of health and CEOof the Eastern Ontario Health Unit.

Overdoses on the rise as quality of street drugs decrease, health unit says

4 years ago

Duration 1:02

Paul Roumeliotis, chief medical officer with the Eastern Ontario Health Unit, says border closures are limiting the supply of illegal drugs coming from the United States, causing dealers in Ontario to stretch supplies by adding dangerous substances.

In seized purple heroin samples, a drug which isnormally heroin laced with fentanyl, the sedative etizolam has also turned up.

A medication from the benzodiazepine family, etizolam, or "benzos" as they are called on the street,functions as a central nervous system depressant.

Overdoses of etizolam can cause dangerously slow breathing that may lead to overdose and death.

More worryingly, since it is not anopioid, it does not respond to naloxone, the medication normally used to reverse the effect of opioid overdose.

In an email, a spokesperson for Ottawa Public Health said overdoses were a continuing problem in Ottawa, too.

"Our message," said Roumeliotis, "is please do not use anything off the streets."