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It was meth before, but Regina Police Chief Evan Bray said a different drug is becoming more prevalent in the city.
“The reality is, we’re seeing more fentanyl, and other drugs that have been laced with or cut with fentanyl and that is what is really causing us this serious health risk in our community,” Bray said during the Greg Morgan Morning Show on Thursday.
Bray said there have been 992 drug overdoses so far this year, 94 of which resulted in fatalities. Four of those deaths happened on Monday.
“That’s a lot of near-death experiences,” he said. “So this is definitely a big problem in our city and we’ve been talking about it for a while.”
Bray said rather than searching for a perfect solution to addiction, harm reduction needs to be embraced because “in the meantime, lives are going to be lost.”
While Naloxone kits have been distributed — and Bray calls the initiative a success — new drugs are making it more difficult to reverse overdoses.
“The challenge is that right now, we have other types of fentanyl, carfentanil and other types of fentanyl that are not reacting to the Narcan the same way that the old fentanyl did,” he said.
“So people are overdosing, (they) admit Narcan is administered and it’s not doing the job. It’s not bringing them back to life, it’s not saving their life and that’s a problem.”
Enforcing COVID-19 measures
The police force still prefers to take an “educational” approach to dealing with those breaking public health orders surrounding COVID-19.
Currently, the public health order limits private indoor gatherings to five people.
Bray said there have been a few complaints of gatherings where there might be seven people getting together for a family birthday.
“Well, obviously, it’s still against the SHA (restrictions) but we’re still taking a kind of an educational approach to those types of situations,” he said.
Bray said it’s the egregious cases of defiance upon which police crack down.
“It’s the overt parties,” Bray said. “We’ve got 70 people in a house partying and not showing any regard for personal safety. Those are the ones that we’ll go, we’ll break the party up (and) everybody goes on their way.
“We can we start an investigation and then we usually loop back with the Saskatchewan Health Authority, put our heads together and determine whether or not it meets the criteria for a ticket.”
He expects more tickets to be written.
“I think the fine is heavy enough,” he said. “I mean, trust me, the people getting these tickets aren’t jumping up and down about $2,800. Clearly that’s not a deterrent (for others). I think we just need to do a better job of hitting home the importance of this.”
On Wednesday, the police issued a news release saying a man had been arrested for threatening store employees after he had been asked to leave the store for not wearing a mask.
Bray is worried about seeing increasingly aggressive behaviour from people who do not follow public health orders.
“We’re just really encouraging people that encounter this sort of aggressive behaviour to not try and meet it with aggression, but to call us,” he said.
