$1.00 can save the life of a loved one or friend

Please consider donating to this important initiative - $1.00 can save a life!

The Student Overdose Prevention and Education Network (SOPEN) is fundraising for fentanyl test strips ($1.00 a test strip) to provide to folks who are at higher risk of overdose, which includes regular drug users and occasional drug users, as well as vulnerable groups of people like college and university students, construction workers, and unhoused folks.

SOPEN is a volunteer led and run community-based initiative organized by a group of students in Hamilton, Ontario. As student’s and social workers on the frontlines of the drug poisoning crisis we have responded to a countless number of traumatic overdoses, so we have collectively decided to develop better long-term solutions to the drug poisoning crisis through community engagement and mutual aid.

Hamilton has been hit hard by the drug poisoning crisis – 166 Hamiltonians died by opioid-overdose in 2021 The death rates continue to rise year after year. This preventable loss of life to the toxic drug supply affects our entire community and many of us are grieving the loss of friends and family.

Did you know? From January to March 2022 96 percent of drug poisoning deaths were accidental. People who use drugs don’t want to die. For example, someone using cocaine at a party does not expect fentanyl to be in their drug of choice. This can result in accidental opioid-overdose and overdose-related death due to the contaminated drug supply and not being able to identify what is in your drugs.

One way to address this is by testing your drugs. Fentanyl test strips are a simple and inexpensive way to reduce drug overdoses. Fentanyl test strips can identify if there is fentanyl in unregulated drugs and they can be used to test injectable drugs, powders, and pills. Being aware if fentanyl is present in unregulated drugs gives people the opportunity to make an educated decision – Knowledge is power and can save the life of a teenager experimenting for the first time, a person buying drugs from a new source, or working class folks who occasionally use drugs on the weekend at a party.

We are calling on the municipal, provincial, and federal government to provide greater access and availability of fentanyl test strips by allocating funding to harm reduction programs and services to distribute fentanyl test strips widely across the City of Hamilton. This is an affordable and lifesaving service that is only being provided by Urban Core Consumption and Treatment Services and the Sex Workers Action Program (SWAP). People who use drugs are the first, first responders to the drug posioning crisis and we are hearing directly from them that they need greater access to drug checking services.

This is not a sustainable solution to the drug poisoning crisis. Fentanyl test strips are a short-term solution to keep people safe until there is adequate drug policy reform that is informed by people with lived and living experience, including scaling up safe supply measures, the decriminalization of drugs, an increase in safe injection sites and inhalation sites, and legal regulation of all drugs.

Thank you,

Olivia Mancini (she/her) MSW, RSW and Kayla Crabtree (she/her)

Co-Founder's

The Student Overdose Prevention and Education Network (SOPEN)

www.sopen.org

@sopenhamilton