W5: OPIOID FENTANYL STREET CRISIS DOCUMENTARY

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[Music] the alarm is growing more urgent and spreading farther across Canada fentanyl highly addictive and sometimes deadly is now a top priority across the country but we're first showed up in Vancouver it is an epidemic and an overwhelming crisis so in this special edition W 5s John Woodward and the CTV News Vancouver team hit the streets with doctors first responders social workers and addicts for a first-hand look at the crisis and the often desperate search for solutions this is the face Vancouver presents to the world a coastal metropolis but roughly 2 kilometers from the bright lights of the skyscrapers is a neighborhood wrestling with darkness the Downtown Eastside it's the end of the line for Canada's down and out and the heart of Canada's opioid crisis drug overdoses killed nearly a thousand people in this province last year in this city someone dies almost every day this intersection is made in Hastings but drug users call it pain and wasting and just steps away we find Patricia and Jessica they've invited us into their world to witness their nightly routine shooting drugs Patricia is 32 she calls this area home she's a mother of four but she hasn't seen her kids in a while they're 11 ten nine in the fourth where are the new they lives my dad and Ryuji know it's really silly ruined my life in more ways than one in ways that are permanent the young women think they're about to shoot heroin but they can't know for sure synthetic opioids are being cut into street drugs all across Canada they are incredibly strong and very cheap here what they think is heroin is more likely to be one of it's much more powerful cousins Sentinel or car fentanyl drugs tainted with a dose of car fentanyl as small as a single grain of salt can kill give me a goddamn no attention cemetery harina no word of a lie I would Jim Megan yeah this is remind eyelid Emily yes heard people turn down their narcan kits if they know I'm sorry thinking that this life living today they joke about narcan the opioid antidotes that could save their lives you could be another thing in the next point I don't know what did it oh absolutely a Patrick Iseman the Waikiki okay I don't know how better I can describe this but you know how you've never hurt your children like I would never hurt my children there's I love them more than of myself a little more than anything in this world I would do anything for them that's how hard it is to come off of this drug Patricia remained calm but whatever jessica has put into her system is taking hold of you I've been using heroin for about two years two years with four months of that with Clinton so been a pretty rough couple years huh myself I was hungry most of the time I lost my husband he's thirteen years that was really hard [Music] Jessica's behavior is becoming erratic her body is contorting she's losing control over her movements I really like I've seen grown men overdose and run amuck this a shot that I just did but the way the Aaron is and we've got you and how much you're getting it's an uncomfortable scene but this is normal for Patricia and Jessica this is the reality of street drugs Sentinel has found its way into knockoff prescription painkillers into party drugs and cocaine people are overdosing across the country and it's not just killing addicts it's killing teenagers in suburban neighborhoods just out to have a good time overdose has killed at least 1400 Canadians last year unprecedented numbers in what has become a coast-to-coast epidemic a real time crisis is unfolding an all-time high in the number of drug overdoses he went from being perfectly healthy to found dead on the family's bathroom floor you take just a couple grains too much and you're you're going to become a statistic and those statistics are grim on average more than two people in this province die a day from an overdose and in this city it's likely that someone will die tonight a reality paramedic Brian Thwaites knows all too well the call volume is just astronomical now what's the amount of overdoses that we're seeing overdoses that happen so often the BC ambulance service created a specialized unit just to respond to the most urgent cases that's Brian's job today how many people would you see in a day maybe 1050 it really depends again on the day but there's been shifts where I've done 26 responses in a 12-hour period 26 different overdoses yeah and that's just my vehicle alone to the numbers last year almost a thousand deaths I understand amazing tragic and today the stakes are even higher it's called welfare Wednesday the day government assistance money goes into people's bank accounts it happens once a month at 9:00 a.m. this Hastings Street Bank opens and there's more money on the street and a lot more drugs for Bryant White's welfare Wednesday means a 40% increase in call volume meaning today he's much more likely to be called to an overdose that kills stops you from breathing and sometimes especially with the potency of like the fentanyl that's coming out into the streets it's instantaneous you know for somebody who's never seen it before it's frightening they're they're blue because they're cyanotic due to the lack of oxygen they're not breathing it looks like they're trying to breathe they're gasping they're completely unconscious and the big thing is is their brain cells are dying it's just like holding your breath for that long Yvette exactly and so when they stop breathing they've only got what a few minutes well depending on the books you read 4 to 6 minutes until you can you know lapse into cardiac arrest it's a frightening scenario playing out all over Vancouver [Music] 11 a.m. aromatics respond to a call a young man isn't breathing it's an overdose Martin God saw it happen this is the first time I'm meeting this guy so the CEO roast like that it's no stated a close call but paramedics got there in time the patient brought back from the brink with narcan that's the heroin antidote but it didn't come from the paramedics it came from other people on the street I have saves up to four lives already myself um it's not an easy job how did you save them I injected narcan Martin is among many who carried their own narcan kits to save other lives and maybe one day his own Martin is a user - I started that no I use heroin which is a big part of my life I have od'd once yup that's how I lost my leg my leg was run over by a bus why do you spent '''l when you know it could kill you Oh [Music] it's like the warm hug you use when you need to warm hug yes that's the best way to get the warm lotta great whatever their reason is for using every injection can have dramatic consequences and by 2:45 p.m. first responders start seeing the overdose calls come in fast firefighters and paramedics are dispatched to this alley there's a man down near hastings and abbott streets the local fire hall doesn't spend much time fighting fires anymore 70% of their calls are medical which includes overdoses 12 hours 10 hours of my shift right so the way I look at it is I just get through it all you can lose the workload has captain Darren Fairburn and others burning out it's frustrating it's scary it's an eye-opener for sure even for me after 22 years it's not sustainable it can't keep going on like this the man survives he's taken away in an ambulance 20 minutes later another OD call you clear one call and you go to the next one it's crazy I've been in this 18 years and the number of calls that we do a shift is like double these easily the increase in overdose calls is being felt system-wide thanks guys Justin see anything oh yeah all emergency responders dealing with an increased workload that's on top of their usual 9-1-1 responsibility paramedics like bryant wait still have to go to all of the other calls it's all a big team down here the fire department first responders are on the call the primary care paramedic teams on the call an advanced life support units also sent when the priority level is high for example in a drug overdose by the time the Sun sets on Wednesday the area Brian covers has seen 23 overdose cases and as night falls and users flood the streets and alleys of Vancouver's Downtown Eastside the tone begins to change tango 3 go ahead Joe 3 RS on your cat it's Brian's first call after dark to the heart at the Downtown Eastside Main and Hastings and it comes with a warning to our film crew this might be a little chaotic for you guys to show up and get on that I just so I'm just thinking your safety at this call because it's turning into nighttime and it's on the street this is ground zero brian is concerned for our safety he insists that we remain in the vehicle he's wakin up safety does our campus okay narcan bought this man time enough to stay alive until the emergency crews got there turns out it was an overdose they were ventilating them and had gotten some narcan into him just as the other paramedic crew showed up and when we got here the other crew said they're good the guys waking up and they don't need our assistance so that's great a great example of everybody working on fighting this crisis and trying to keep people alive right but off the street and in the dark alley tucked away from the busy streets in the eyes of the community it's just us watching Patricia and Jessica Oh they've injected drugs and things are going from bad to worse forgetting [Music] Jessica's drug trip is taking a turn she's twisting dancing flailing she's losing control I've never failed ever in my dark addiction I don't know why some do and some don't you know what does it feel like to you to be honest with you I feel normal [Music] and then it gets even worse for Jessica she's on the ground she's not moving Patricia's friend is in trouble she rushes to her side to check if she's even breathing she's lucky that Patricia was there for her it could have been a lot worse nearly a thousand drug users died in this province last year many within blocks of this spot the relentless calls for help we're going to another overdose for frontline caregivers hey Floyd hey you know when w5 continues tango 3 6:15 p.m. tango 3 it's a busy night for emergency crews in Vancouver's Downtown inside paramedic Brian Thwaites handles the most serious drug overdose calls and they are coming in quickly this one barely two minutes after his last response possible overdose or cardiac arrest and in a downtown alley the address is in an alley one of many in a maze of downtown streets the epicenter of Canada's opioid drug crisis is here concentrated in roughly ten square city blocks alley after alley of doorways dumpsters fire escapes parking garages just knowing the area and knowing some addresses I'm thinking it might be in a different alley you guys see anything fire they're walking around this is the other amulet that was just here get to be a little bit of a hunt done it yeah right and a lot of time you have people who don't know where they are and that makes things difficult the alleys can be confusing in the darkness the crews are having trouble finding their patient this is a little spot where guys like to go in hide tango 3 I've done the alley and I don't see anything here either with no sign of a patient the search is abandoned there are more lives to save and admit it later another call we're going to another overdose it's on the street it's in front of a shelter it's an overdose a few blocks away the man is sprawled out on the sidewalk he's not breathing he needs oxygen and if he doesn't get the antidote narcan he could die this man saw him collapse last room I'm helping that's it that's just what you got to do you got to be quick it's like it's not as a reflex but the man is still unconscious the situation is critical the drugs in his system could still do a lot of damage so it looks like it's an active resuscitation that's why dispatch is called for Brian's expertise hey guys okay the team works to revive him his SATs reppin 98 to forget that his eyes finally open hey sport how you doing he's conscious but he still needs urgent care so the crew loads him on a stretcher Brian and his belongings hey my friend did your glasses don't as those the fellow had taken some narcotics and had become unresponsive I'm not quite sure if he got some bystander narcan but when we arrived the other paramedic crew was already here and they had given him some more narcan and fortunately he wasn't down enough where he needed to be ventilated so they were able to stimulate him to breathe enough and give him high flow oxygen and he was awake so when we actually arrived his eyes were open he was looking around so a good outcome for him luckily you know yeah what's the next step for him they're going to run them up to the hospital or to the MMU the MMU or mobile medical unit it's a mass unit a field hospital that can fold up and be transported to any emergency just like one you would find used by the military rather than bringing patients to the hospital Vancouver Coastal Health is bringing the hospital to the patient right now the MMU is on Hastings Street in the heart of Vancouver's Downtown Eastside Dallas was brought here after he overdosed apparently I was out I couldn't breathe for five minutes or so so after that I feel really tired and over stolen but pretty worn out right now and go down do you know what it was that you took on heroin do you think that's all was in it no I'm pretty sure there was something over noon like were you ready to put that in your system no I wasn't ready at first I didn't know what it was and until I found out what it was and I really want to stop but I couldn't it's really bad that's what I'm here for trying to get some home help from addiction specialist like dr. Susan Burgess she consults patients like Dallas once the nurses stabilize them Burgess wants to get Dallas into addiction treatment but with fentanyl she knows even if he gets in the odds are stacked against him people who were stable are going off there were cured substitutions and we have discussions with them and you know are you worried no I kind of really like this even though they're a mess they're homeless they're going to die unless something changes what makes this risk so severe just the power of the particular substances I kind of say goodbye in my heart to my patients after I see them anytime how many people are dying down here anyway they just die more quickly [Music] it's now 650 p.m. it's paramedic Bryant weights fifth call in an hour and a half this one comes in as a possible cardiac arrest which means a possible overdose these overdoses quite frankly they look dead so it will get defaulted to a cardiac arrest call because we're not certain hey guys a woman is down paramedics tried to stabilize her with a narcan injection picture wake up for you hello hi she's still pretty deep one this is really nice hi honey you're gonna be okay she's alive paramedics brought her back from the break but it's not enough she still needs additional care I don't know if they're going to take her to st. Paul's hospital or if they'll take her to the MMU what they're providing there's fantastic and also it frees up emergency room beds by midnight on welfare Wednesday emergency responders will have answered 33 suspected overdose calls that's what it is down here what you're seeing now is is the north just one call after another and it just doesn't stop thanks guys long time no see huh okay have a good night 8:00 the brutal cost of a lifelong addiction I've lost too many friends too much was over where your next fix could be the last it's Vic we're going playing Russian roulette when W five continues welcome back what we've seen how the fentanyl epidemic is crushing first responders in Vancouver now the desperate search for solutions some of which would have been unthinkable only a few years ago W 5s John Woodward continues our investigation st. Paul's Hospital is the closest emergency room to Vancouver's Downtown Eastside ground zero of Canada's opioid crisis it's these three quarters of the overdose calls from the area patients like Jonathan what's it taste like we're trying to kill yourself this isn't part of a suicide attempt or anything Jonathan was picked up in Vancouver's West End er dr. Brian LIHEAP is trying to keep him conscious give me a squeeze here Jonathan wake up for me but yes what Jonathan injected was probably fentanyl an extremely powerful and deadly narcotic hey Jonathan I think you're a little bit too sleepy right now they gave you the dark and one of your friends did what we need to do is we need to watch here for a while to make sure that what you took is completely out of your system okay we need to get a couple of tests on you but most important we need to watch it for a bit a let's get an IV enema to wake up a little bit more but he has already received a dose of narcan the fast-acting injection the temporarily counteracts the effects of opioids like Sentinel but the doctor feels he needs more if he doesn't get the IV the danger is he could overdose again if the fentanyl stolen board I want to make sure it doesn't come back in Center Andrea nail you there eh yeah Jonathan is just one of more than a dozen OD cases dr. LIHEAP sees every day fentanyl is a more challenging overdose to deal with than heroin which I know sounds a bit funny but they take longer time longer resources and the risk of them sort of going downhill is bigger Jonathan gets his IV drip the antidote does its job he's stable and becoming more alert I use enough heroin to get out of pain and that's where I stopped once about a famous Dutch cheese I don't do the drug to get hooked he says his pain started with two herniated disks in his back then the torn shoulder that was 25 years ago he's been using heroin ever since but recently the drugs he's been buying have changed they're now laced with cheaper and more powerful substances there is no heroin around anymore it was so fentanyl or it's more powerful cousin car fentanyl spent for a charging rhino or sent feeding elephants and it's meant to soften bed here we're fixing putting in our bodies I've lost a lot family members my street family was about 3,000 I'm probably looking at about maybe my thumb is down to about 600 Jonathan guesses he has od'd 25 times in the last 11 months he's cheated death so far but he says with his pain he can't stop I don't want to go I've lost too many friends too much Mozilla I'm in a thousand deaths in BC last year related to opiate overdose that's a pretty powerful statistic also people use and I think that you're living in club a false hope if you think you know even in different national on society you think it's not going to affect you you even you know within one or two degrees of separation and so I think it's closer to most people I believe than they would be comfortable with hospital drug overdose admissions in the region have almost doubled from four thousand visits in 2015 to seven thousand visits last year the hospital wrestling with the volume has opened up a specialized addiction intake one floor above the emergency room doors that gives patients like Jonathan's the option for immediate addictions counseling and further care dr. Dan calla is the head of the ER at st. Paul's his unit faces this crisis every day and what's causing it well there's no question it's the product on the street this new ultra potent drug that you know the dealers can bring in from I think most of its coming from overseas and it's highly concentrated so they can bring small amounts and make a lot of money it's a very short-sighted business plan when you kill your own clientele though and it seems it's so potent that if you even make a small error in the production of this till it could be failed totally 100% yeah there's no room for error with this drug if you're alone and you use every time it's difficult when you're playing Russian roulette how bad is this crisis you know in a scale it's comparable to the AIDS crisis of the 80s in fact it's more than three times worse at its peak AIDS claim to 267 lives a year in BC last year overdoses killed 922 people things have been bad here for a long time over a decade ago authorities started inside a supervised injection site that got an exemption from federal drug laws nurses here watch users inject drugs and take action if anyone overdoses it's so popular there are often lineups and sometimes people like Clayton seek other options I've overdosed before luckily have many friends are around but you know what happens if they're not around right an attitude like that has kept Clayton alive for five years so we'll bring to your head to stay clean right out of the leg it's dirty outside and you know it's safe place I always know in the back of my head that if anything does happen I'm safe here right he's come here to what's called the pop-up tent it's like a safe injection site but there are no nurses unlike in sight volunteers watch over users looking for signs of possible Odie's and intervening when necessary users bring in their own supply of drugs sit down to tables and inject it began as an extension to the street market in the Downtown Eastside run by former businesswoman and city politician Sarah Blythe we're right out in the open and people you know from the community are coming and going at all times and since we're outside people from you know if there was an overdose in the neighborhood people would run to us because we were just right out there they knew we were trained and so it just became more and like more and more people every day started running towards us you know asking us for help it just got to the point where there were overdoses happening every day eventually we just said it like what the is going on so you took matters into your own hands yeah so we basically said we know what to do we know that it may not be 100% a legal situation here but we know what what what we can do to save lives today the volunteers are watching Clayton inject what he thinks is cocaine and heroin two shots two batches of unknown drugs tell me what you just did that I got myself better what did that mean getting myself understood from the heroin withdrawal and when was the last time before just now this last night before I went to bed okay yeah and do you worry about what's in the drug to use it down here you don't know right downtown you don't know but um honest not honestly I don't worry about it because so I happened to me really but and how long have you been using since I was like 15 years old he's a familiar face to volunteer Dave Chappelle day he's a regular younger and he does that the double injection whether it is the cocaine and then they do the down it is a scary mix because again you're going up and then you're you're going down both narcotics are fighting each other sometimes especially the younger younger guys they'll fight it they'll actually quite their OD by sheer force the wheel to your course they're fighting and fighting and eventually they go down but again you know we've never had a death we always get everybody back it's only been a few minutes since his injection but Clayton wants to leave are you sure volunteers are concerned they can protect people like Clayton here but they can't force them to stay does it worry you watching somebody like that walk into the alley yeah because we don't have their backs in the alley the pop-up tent supervises hundreds of injections a day but Sara wants to do more and take things a step further hopefully one day to help people better manage their addictions and to stop them from using in the first place eventually you want something like that because it's got you know medical staff and it's got mental health workers where you can get the rehabilitation I mean in the end like this is all just sort of a band-aid but it's a band-aid that's working when someone does OD here volunteers are there to call for help keeping users from dying alone on the street a city gripped by a drug crisis the cost of someone using illicit opioid is enormous searches for a way out sometimes I wanted to give up this job is not easy right when w5 continues the alleys of Vancouver's Downtown Eastside here hidden among the dumpsters the users haunting tributes to the hundreds of lives lost and a warning of danger the drug that killed so many mentioned by name Sentinel [Music] nick is part of a unique cleanup crew called spikes on bikes volunteers trying to do their part cleaning up the thousands of syringes or rigs that litter the alleys of the Downtown Eastside many of those rigs are contaminated with diseases like HIV or hepatitis C that's dangerous because users often sit through discarded needles for unused drugs exposing themselves to further harm combing the alleys for needles presents another opportunity for the crews they come face to face with users and they're able to keep an eye out for possible Odie's they're trained in emergency first aid and how to use the opioid antidote drug narcan it just locks it and it's only temporary - they come about over five minutes I've seen get up and and be playing singing guitar the one minute they're blue and the next day like they come right out of it right so it's kind of that that interesting thing to watch Nia can't his own reason to be out here I've lost one close friend a mother Mary Purdy possibly a few weeks ago at her home because she wasn't at a take injection site how does it make you feel to know that some of those that happened it broke my heart because I was really close to her and I went to her funeral and told them that I'm out here sometimes you can't do anything right but I had to let them know them but absolutely doing it sometimes I wanted to give up this job it's not easy right you ever think if you're going through this I'm doing this for Mary yeah I think of it all the time actually it seems everyone knows someone affected John Pinkley lost a friend - this used to be pink Lee's home only two years ago a tent city that has since been abandoned there was a time where when I was fixing and I was living in a tent and I wasn't sure what I really wanted anymore I was tired of everything he was homeless spending his days and nights hustling to feed his habit he tried to quit but nothing worked in this alley behind the Regent Hotel something changed a close friend named Jo died of an overdose on these steps his life paralleled mine so close and you know there for the grace of God go I I could be neat let me do this Ali six months previous to that I'd reached that point to where I just didn't care anymore how close you think you came to being on this step right here never getting up i-i've come close do you missed you yeah yeah I miss John knew he could have been next and he needed help he was accepted into an innovative program at the Crosstown clinic Martin here he doesn't have to inject an ally there's no risk of Sentinel I guess he doesn't have to guess what's in the syringe not anymore John is using heroin legally medical grade prescription heroin paid for by the government and he credits it with saving his life as free syringes there's one good morning and once at lunch and one good evening they're spaced apart too so that my body has gets the most out of the drug before I have to clearly shot before I start to feel withdrawal feel withdrawal symptoms John injects the prescription heroin himself he visits three times a day and receives just enough heroin not to get high but to send off the symptoms of withdrawal and he'll probably be on this drug for the rest of his life crosstown is the only clinic in North America offering medical grade heroin to chronic users patients are carefully vetted it's a last resort the program is only available to long-term users like John who has unsuccessfully tried other options like opioid replacements and counseling probably of all experienced doctor Scott McDonald runs the clinic models on a similar program in Switzerland how do you know if somebody's going to benefit from treatment like this well we know from 25 years of experience in in Europe there's a ways to get people who are using illicit opioids into care so that they get healthy they stop using street opioids and the burden on society in terms of dollars and resuscitation and the burden on the police there's another option when people are using illicit opioids number one it's a public health disaster the cost of somebody using illicit opioids is enormous we estimate that the cost for one person using illicit opioid at least forty eight thousand dollars a year we can provide this treatment of this clinic for about twenty five thousand dollars a year and if you're built into cost efficiency you might get that down to fourteen thousand dollars a year so what you're saying is because these people are not stealing they're not going to jail they're not going to the hospital or actually saving money yeah and we've got solid evidence showing that and it's only societal costs we're not even including the cost of stolen goods damaged public property so our cost estimate is actually under estimating the real benefits of society so if you have to add it all up with all these patients in here how much do you think that this clinic is saving thank Hoover already million millions of dollars yeah crosstown has given John the opportunity to rebuild his life he's not spending his days chasing down his next fix he went back to school got a job and got his own apartment Patricia and Jessica are two addicts that call these streets home they want that kind of opportunity to patricia's a mom and wants to be stable enough to be there for her kids when I was taking mine with three times a schedule maintained and not a large amount losing what I needed I would I was calm and I was happy and I could be a rowdy boy it's good I've heard about the cross town but I for the subscriber I think it's an amazing program it would be a path I think towards me ultimately get in clean and future and it would give me easy this is what I need for my physical ailments as well cross down treats about 150 people already doctors estimate there's a need for as many as 500 more but the program doesn't have the money to expand specialized paramedics on the ground an army style mobile medical hospital prescription heroin supervised injection sites and volunteers learning how to save lives it may be making a difference in the opioid crisis in December five people were dying every day the numbers declined a little in early 2017 but the death rate was still 50% higher than the year before and those who have to see those deaths up close like st. Paul's er dr. Brian LIHEAP are thinking seriously about even more radical options I don't believe that will ever stop people from using illicit drugs as pie-in-the-sky every culture every time in history does I think that growing more ii think that really legalizing it making sure that people know exactly what they're taking and they taking precise doses is probably the best solution for dealing with the death and the misery that these things cause it's a revolutionary statement legalizing drugs as strong as heroin on a large scale across the country but with things as bad as they are here he feels all options should be on the table whether that happens or not dr. dan cala of st. Paul's Hospital says the rest of the country should be prepared to do something what's the advice you have for them my advice to them is prepare for it's coming and don't put your head in your sand don't we have to respond on the fly here and maybe we responded too late potentially but when you know this toxic lethal drug is out there and it will take hold in other communities I guarantee it be prepared it's after dark 946 p.m. near the end of our last night in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside yet another call for emergency service another OD this time the 911 came too late no narcan no resuscitation in this body bag is 54 year old Marcel Holland he was found dead by a neighbor who came to check on him Paulin grew up in northern BC he started working at 16 to help raise his five brothers and sisters he worked 25 years at an ironworker his sister says in 2014 he was hurt when his car was hit by a pickup truck he never could get over the paint his family says that's why he started using heroin I just so sad she's against my brother a nice psycho seeing and we let me up there and I knew what he was doing this time it took his life [Music] one more death Marcel Holland puts a face to the grim reality of the opioid crisis the worst case scenario for any of the 53 overdoses over the past 48 hours in Vancouver on the rush of the emergency crews goes on on the next call someone else may die another ambulance on its way to try to save another life [Music]

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Channel: Official W5

Views: 1,491,638

Rating: 4.4512777 out of 5

Keywords: W5, opioid, fentanyl, documentary, w5, ctv w5, ctv news, overdose, vancouver, epidemic, paramedic, ambulance, emergency, VPD

Id: F1ojeXgyAu0

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Length: 43min 2sec (2582 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 25 2017

Reddit Comments

Sad but real. Interesting how it ultimately ends in financial costs when helping out with these people though.