The forgotten front line in the opioid crisis
LETHBRIDGE – Sitting at a large table in the breakroom next to the main bay at the Lethbridge Fire Headquarters, I find myself surrounded by veteran and relatively new firefighter/paramedics alike.
The original plan was to interview a few of them one-on-one for this story, but as I quickly discovered, that’s not how they do things. If there was a time to quote ‘The Three Musketeers’, this would be it.
In recent years, the use of illicit opioids – and fentanyl in particular – has spiked across Alberta and the rest of the country, to the point where it’s been declared a health crisis.
During a recent media event, representatives from ARCHES (AIDS Outreach Community Harm Reduction Education Support) in Lethbridge, explained that in 2016, Alberta lost an average of one person everyday to overdose. Based on results from the first quarter of 2017, they anticipate that number could climb to more than two drug overdose fatalities everyday.