Release Date
Geography
Language of Resource
Full Text Available
Open Access / OK to Reproduce
Peer Reviewed
Objective
The purpose of this report is to provide a summary of the substances that were submitted to drug checking in sites across British Columbia, as well as highlight any trends in the unregulated drug supply in 2021. The data are presented both by health authority regions, and by drug category, to provide an in-depth look at how the unregulated drug supply varies between region, and how it changed across the year.
Findings/Key points
Benzodiazepines were increasingly present in expected-down samples submitted for drug checking throughout the year, from 20.3% in January to 34.4% in December. Stimulants such as cocaine, crack cocaine, methamphetamine all matched expectation in over 90% of samples, as confirmed by the FTIR spectrometer. Ketamine matched expectation in 92.6% of samples, as confirmed by the FTIR spectrometer. Of the opioids, “down” and fentanyl both matched expectation in over 90% of samples, while heroin matched expectation in 49.2% of samples, as confirmed with either a positive fentanyl test strip, or identified by the FTIR spectrometer.
