Southern Alberta Council on Public Affairs (SACPA)

While painkilling medicine has been around for a very long time, Fentanyl is a powerful addictive opioid painkiller, the use of which has caused an increasing public health threat in Canada and elsewhere. Fentanyl was initially approved in 1960 and used for the treatment of moderate to severe pain, especially cancer pain. However, recent years have seen a growing use of fentanyl and its analogs that are widely synthesized in laboratories and adulterated with illicit supplies of heroin, cocaine, methamphetamine, and counterfeit pills, contributing to addiction and the exponential growth in the number of drug-related overdose deaths.   The southern Alberta community of Kainai First Nation has been hit very hard by the Fentanyl overdose crises and since 2014 in particular, hundreds in the community have died tragically. The speaker will describe the early circumstances of the crises and as well, more recent measures taken to mitigate the loss, which includes a harm reduction strategy, since conventional abstinen