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Saskatchewan’s government is looking for a new home for the gizmo used by Prairie Harm Reduction to test illicit street drugs in Saskatoon.
The fate of the drug testing machine, which played a major role in toxic drug alerts issued by the Saskatchewan Ministry of Health, remains uncertain after a financial crisis forced PHR to close its doors last week.
“We’re still working on that,” Minister of Mental Health and Addictions Lori Carr told reporters in Regina Wednesday.
PHR had an exemption from narcotics laws issued by Health Canada to operate a supervised drug consumption site at its location on 20th Street in Pleasant Hill.
That exemption also applied to operation of the Fourier-transform infrared (FTIR) spectrometer to test illegal drugs for contamination. Any agency that started using the machine and testing illegal substances would also need a Health Canada exemption.
Provincial drug alerts sent out for Saskatoon previously contained information about substances inside drugs, descriptions of the drugs and photos.
The current alert for Saskatoon issued Monday afternoon contains no information about the drugs, only a warning about an elevated risk of overdoses.
The Saskatoon fire department responded to 195 overdoses the first two weeks of April, already more than in any entire month this year.
The Saskatchewan Health Authority purchased two spectrometer machines in 2023 and placed one at PHR in Saskatoon and the other at the supervised consumption site in Regina, Newo Yotina Friendship Centre.
The initiative was announced by the government then as an effort to save lives from toxic drugs. PHR played a major overdose prevention role in Saskatoon through drug testing, as well as training people how to use naloxone to reverse overdoses.
“We’re always concerned when there’s an overdose alert,” Carr said.
The minister said she’s spoken to Saskatoon’s deputy fire chief, St. Paul’s Hospital and the Saskatoon Tribal Council to let them know the government is available to help.
An email from the Ministry of Health said take-home testing strips are available at Saskatoon Public Health on Idylwyld Drive North and at the Saskatoon Tribal Council Health Centre on 20th Street next to PHR. The strips test for fentanyl and benzodiazepine.
Carr said the province remains focused on recovery and helping people to stop using illegal drugs.
PHR closed a week ago after it became apparent the organization could not overcome a deficit in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. Health Canada had suspended its exemption to operate the consumption site over the financial struggles last month.
Then, the provincial government pulled about $2.5 million in annual funding to run other PHR programs like distributing naloxone kits and running two youth homes.
Earlier in March, the PHR board fired executive director Kayla DeMong after it learned about what it called a “significant financial shortfall.” DeMong declined comment this week, but said she planned to issue a statement.
The consumption site opened in 2020, the same year the organization changed its name from AIDS Saskatoon.
