Fentanyl test strips found at dollar store, provide good ‘alternative’: advocate

published on June 3, 2018 by Hana Mae Nassar and Cole Deakin in News 1130

VANCOUVER (NEWS 1130) – Fentanyl test strips have been found for cheap at a local dollar store in Vancouver.

They’re being sold at the Dollar Tree on Pender and Main Streets for $1.25, and were discovered by an Overdose Prevention Society volunteer.

“[They] went over to the dollar store to pick up a few items like water, glasses, and things like that,” explains the organization’s Sarah Blyth. “She noticed that there was some fentanyl test strips there, and actually marijuana test strips. So I said, ‘bring us some back,’ and she picked them up and brought them back and we did some tests on them.”

Blyth says a number of different street drug samples were tested using the dollar store strips. “And we also used the fentanyl test strips that we have here at the overdose prevention site, and everything came up positive on both… It showed that, I think, the test works.”

This is good news, in her view, especially if the test strips become more widely available.

“I think that any access to a way that people can find an affordable way to test their drugs to make sure that they don’t have fentanyl in them or if it does have fentanyl and they don’t know it, then they can make some decisions about how they’re going to use the drugs.”

As the opioid crisis continues to take more lives across BC — and even the country, Blyth believes making these tests more accessible is important.

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