Kyle Besaw carefully tips over a small, paper cup, pouring a tiny, bluish-green pebble onto the plate of a drug-checking machine. With a metal tool, he positions the sample over a tiny crystal and lowers a clamp.
The woman who purchased the drug and asked for it to be checked expects it to be fentanyl. But she’s worried it may also contain benzodiazepines – a class of drugs commonly used to treat anxiety and sleep disorders that is now being cut into the local illicit supply.
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The following year, the city and the BC Centre on Substance Use (BCCSU) purchased a portable Fourier-transform infrared (FTIR) spectrometer – a device that can test a range of substances and identify multiple compounds at once within a couple of minutes – and made it available at rotating VCH sites.
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