U of S study takes aim at province’s growing opioid crisis

It’s an effort to get a handle on the province’s growing opioid crisis.

“Fentanyl is here, and whether people are using it intentionally as a drug of choice or unintentionally we’re not entirely sure, but we know that people are using that in both those types of ways,” said U of S doctoral candidate James Dixon, who worked on the research study.

The study, which was funded by the University of Saskatchewan College of Medicine and Canadian Research Initiative in Substance Misuse Prairie Node, taps into the experiences of frontline workers who work with addicts.

Dixon said they talked to mental health and addictions workers as well as police to get their unique perspective on the crisis.

“They all recognized there was a crisis going on, but how they understood it and how they looked at it differed,” Dixon said.

But he said there was a lot of common ground on how they should respond to the crisis.

He said there is a need to get everyone together in a concerted effort in dealing with it.

To that end, the study recommends better co-ordination of existing services and a crisis response plan paired with a long-term provincial strategy.

He suggests a one-stop shop would help people dealing with addiction.

“One of the core principles in harm reduction is meeting people where they are at,” Dixon said.

He said such a setup would connect users to other services and other types of treatment.

Dixon said it’s not just fentanyl they’re worried about; they’re also worried about a rise in crystal meth use.

“If you talk to any of the frontline service providers, they’ll tell you crystal meth is a problem, but we don’t really have any statistics or anything that show exactly how much of a problem,” Dixon said.

He said that they know it’s an issue, but that it’s really quite hidden.

“And we don’t have any idea of how big it is, except that we know that it’s wreaking havoc on all human agencies and services out there,” Dixon added.