Veterinary tranquilizers found in majority of Toronto fentanyl samples: drug testing service

Ethan Lang · CBC News

· Posted: Mar 14, 2025 10:17 PM EDT | Last Updated: 2 minutes ago

Veterinary tranquilizers are being recovered successful a ample magnitude of downtown Toronto's fentanyl supply, according to a cause investigating service.

Between Feb. 22 and March 7, toxic cause samples taken by Toronto's Drug Checking Service, a escaped and anonymous nationalist wellness service that collects toxic cause samples for investigating from 10 sites astir the city's downtown, recovered 81 per cent of what users expected to beryllium fentanyl included xylazine and medetomidine.

It's a unsafe mix, says Hayley Thompson, the managing manager of Toronto's Drug Checking Service.

"Both of these are veterinary tranquilizers that are cardinal tense strategy and respiratory depressants that, peculiarly successful operation with precocious potency opioids similar fentanyl, would enactment to suppress people's vitals," Thompson said. 

It's not wholly wide wherefore these tranquilizers are added to fentanyl, but Thompson says she believes it is to prolong the short-acting opioid's effect for a longer play of time. 

Thompson says seeing fentanyl combined with veterinary tranquilizers, particularly xylazine, isn't new, but the cause checking work hasn't seen numbers similar these since it started investigating samples successful 2020.

The beingness of these tranquilizers adds aggregate wellness risks, beforehand enactment workers say. 

Naloxone can't reverse veterinary tranquilizers: advocate

For instance, Thompson says naloxone, which reverses the effects of fentanyl, doesn't reverse the effects of veterinary tranquilizers.

Frontline idiosyncratic Sarah Greig says she suspects the premix of tranquilizers and fentanyl is besides down a emergence successful paramedic calls related to cardiac arrests astatine the Moss Park Consumption Treatment Service implicit the past fewer months. 

Greig, manager of substance usage and intelligence wellness astatine South Riverdale Community Health Centre, says supervised depletion sites aren't equipped for that.

"Our sites are acceptable up to respond to opioid overdoses oregon respiratory issues," Greig said. "We're not acceptable up for cardiac issues."

According to information provided by Ontario's main coroner, Dirk Huyer, the beingness of xylazine successful opioid-related deaths didn't alteration overmuch from 2023 to 2024, going up lone 3.6 per cent.

Huyer says Toronto's Drug Testing Service has the much applicable numbers for the moment, since coroner information lone comes successful good aft idiosyncratic has died. 

"It's really, I think, the astir effectual mode to recognize what's happening now," helium said.

Consumption tract closures could bounds aboriginal testing

But the service's sampling size is astir to decrease.

That's due to the fact that 5 of Toronto's supervised depletion sites are slated to adjacent astatine the extremity of March arsenic a effect of caller provincial legislation.

Toronto's Drug Testing Service collects investigating samples astatine these sites — and their closures could alteration the magnitude of toxic drugs the work checks by up to 60 per cent, according to Thompson.

WATCH | 5 supervised depletion sites to adjacent successful Toronto aft March: 

That's a large interest for beforehand enactment workers astatine different supervised depletion sites, similar Greig astatine Moss Park, who says the cause investigating work makes a large difference.

"It really helps us, you know, fig retired what the champion effect is to those types of adverse cause reactions," Greig said. "More and much radical are accessing the cause checking service, and they are making informed decisions astir their cause use."