Being a drug dealer who sells a lethal dose of Fentanyl is the best advertisement that you are selling the most potent stuff, says a member of the Guelph Police Service Drug Unit.
Guelph Police Service is asking for more resources — including additional staff and equipment — to get ahead of trends in batting the Opioid crisis.
On Thursday, the Guelph Police Services Board heard a presentation from Detective Sergeant Benjamin Bair of the Guelph Police Service Drug Unit.
Bair acknowledged that harm reduction can be an effective means of reducing deaths during the current Opioid crisis, but noted enforcement is also necessary if Guelph hopes to get ahead of rising death rate trends seen in the United States and British Columbia.
“We are above the Ontario average in terms of Opioid-related deaths,” said Bair. “My prediction is it’s going to triple in the next two to three years, the same way B.C.’S did.”
Bair said there has been 45 Opioid-related deaths in Guelph and Wellington County since 2015.
Because users of Opioids can build a tolerance to it, Bair said they are often in search of dealers who have the strongest drugs on the street — and purple Fentanyl and other stronger variants are tailored to meet that demand.
Bair said the current street price of a single hit of purple Fentanyl is about $30 for 0.1 of a gram. A lethal dose for an average person is 0.2 grams of Fentanyl.
More potent variants like blue or yellow Fentanyl cost about $40. Bair said it may seem counter-intuitive that dealers are charging more for Opioids that are more likely to kill you.
“For those of us who don’t have a dependency, that seems really out of whack. You would think people would avoid the really dangerous stuff and stay with the nice, safe stuff,” said Bair. “Everybody has an independent level of tolerance, so if you think your tolerance is higher than the guy who died, you are buying from (the dealer selling the most potent Fentanyl).”
“Oddly, someone dying from your stuff becomes an advertisement, which makes it even more awful,” he said.
Bair said the street price of a gram of Fentanyl is about $240, while the same amount of cocaine or crystal meth costs around $100.
“There is no other drug that is as profitable as Fentanyl — it’s not even close,” he said.
The Drug Unit’s main focus is to disrupt the supply and distribution of illegal Opioids in Guelph, said Bair. So far in 2018, they have seized the equivalent of 2,900 hits of Fentanyl.
Currently, there are six officers working in the Drug Unit, with as few as four being active at any given time due to vacations.
During the presentation, the Police Services Board heard a case for more to be added. Bair said some similarly-sized cities in Ontario can have as many as 10 officers working in their Drug Unit.
Due to lack of resources, Bair said Guelph Police must sometimes put aside actionable intelligence on traffickers of other drugs in order to prioritize going after Fentanyl dealers
Bair also highlighted the need for a civilian analyst to work in support of the Drug Unit. He said Guelph is one of the few cities in Ontario to not have one working with officers by looking at intelligence and providing community threat assessments.
The board also heard that the Drug Unit is interested in obtaining specialized scanning equipment to quickly identify if a substance is a narcotic.
Although Guelph Police has not formally requested the addition of staff, board chair Don Drone said he expects to see an ask to boost to the Drug Unit’s staffing when the next budget is presented.
“I think the chief and the deputy have clearly spent some resources and enhanced (the Drug Unit) over the years, but maybe there’s a need to take another look at it,” Drone told GuelphToday, immediately after the meeting. “In many respects, we are still very safe but if we ignore this we ignore it at our peril.”
Chief Jeff DeRuyter told GuelphToday that Guelph Police Service is committed to strengthening the enforcement pillar of the local drug strategy, but also to supporting community partners in the other three pillars — prevention, treatment and harm reduction.
“We believe in harm reduction and have supported the Community Health Centre in that, but on the other side we have the enforcement responsibility and we know that elements of our community are being impacted as victims of crime, because some people who have substance issues are participating in property crime,” said DeRuyter. “There’s a difficult balance that we have.”
