London, Ont., police have announced that 30 guns and approximately $789,000 worth of drugs have been seized between January and July 2024.
Since January, a total of 21 search warrants were executed by the Guns and Gangs Section in London, resulting in a total of 50 people charged, a combined 144 Controlled Drugs and Substances Act charges and 103 Criminal Code of Canada Charges.
Approximately $79,877 in cash was also seized in relation to the drug trade.
A major issue that police and community health prescribers are tackling is the diversion of Dilaudid prescribed from safe supply programs found in these seizures as an unintended consequence of that program. Dilaudid is prescribed in opioid-replacement programs to help patients move away from street-level opioids where most overdoses occur due to unknown drug composition, and towards a consistent, safe dose of prescribed medication.
However, patients are using their take-home prescriptions of Dilaudid as currency to purchase stronger opioids like fentanyl and carfentanil.
“So far in 2023, we’ve seized just over 12,000 hydromorphone tablets, the overwhelming majority of which, meaning all but 675, was in Dilaudid 8-mg form,” says Dept. Police Chief Paul Bastien.
“We have found direct evidence linking Dilaudid 8-mg seizures to safe supply. In 26 separate cases, we obtained direct evidence of diversion in the form of packaging or labelling.”
In 2019, London police seized approximately 850 hydromorphone tablets, 75 or 10 per cent were Dilaudid 8 mg. In 2023, they seized 30,000 hydromorphone tablets with 15,000 being Dilaudid 8 mg. So far in 2024, police report just over 12,000 hydromorphone tablets seized with all but 675 being Dilaudid.
“A multimodal response along all four pillars of prevention, treatment, enforcement and harm reduction are necessary,” says Dr. Alex Summers, medical officer of health with the London Middlesex Health Unit.
“Diversion must be managed. It must be mitigated and the Middlesex London community drug and alcohol committee will support the review of current processes to identify opportunities for enhancement across the Middlesex London community to ensure diversion is managed.”
Summers says the toxic drug crisis is the most pressing public health issue that London and the surrounding region faces. Scott Courtice, executive director at the London Intercommunity Health Centre, also spoke with a harm reduction approach in mind. There are strategies in place in community health organizations to prevent diversion.
“They provide a urine sample to ensure the medication we expect to be there is in their system, and if it’s not that’s an indication that diversion may be occurring,” says Courtice.
“We have removed people from the program if we’ve discovered diversion in the clinic. There may be other reasons; we work with highly-marginalized people so sometimes their medication may have been stolen. We really try to individualize and understand what’s happening in their life when it’s discovered.
“We also move from take-home doses to supervised doses so people take it at the pharmacy.”
However, there are other sources for Dilaudid, including trafficking from other cities. Dilaudid is typically not responsible for overdoses, rather other opioids and mainly fentanyl. According to police, 85 per cent of overdoses are from fentanyl and carfentanil.
“The unreliability of those illicit products leads to overdoses, due to the unpredictability of those products,” says Summers.
In addition to safe supply diversion, the conference also touched on gun violence. In 2023, there were a total of 27 shootings, which almost surpassed the record for the city which was 28. This year, London has only had three shootings, whereas there were almost 20 at this time last year.
In an emailed statement from Mayor Josh Morgan, he thanks police for getting dangerous weapons and drugs off city streets.
“This must be addressed, and there needs to be a level of urgency associated with that review. While this is not a municipal government program, I fully support an immediate, comprehensive, and full-scale review of existing protocol, and urge those who administer these programs to work closely with London Police and the Middlesex-London Health Unit to develop a better path forward,” says Morgan.
“The consequences of inaction are significant and can only lead to increasingly harmful impacts on individuals, neighborhoods and communities. These trends must be reversed. While the broader issue of safe supply has resulted in polarizing debate, I am certain that everybody is united in a desire to keep these substances from winding up in the wrong hands.”
Comments