'Like putting a gun to your head,' warns Winnipeg man who lost loved ones to street drug 'down'
Fire-paramedic service sees sharp spike in calls involving opiates, says drugs appear to be more potent
First, he watched his cousin die. Then his girlfriend.
Now William Whitford wants others to know about a street drug called "down" before it kills someone else.
"Snorting, smoking — buyer beware. They think they're getting high, but it's just like putting a gun to your head and pulling your trigger. It's like playing Russian roulette. You're taking your chances," he said.
Whitford, 53, says his 60-year-old cousin Danny died earlier this year after snorting down — a mixture of heroin and fentanyl — that is also referred to as pink or purple down.
"I guess he did a couple of lines … [and] went down. We thought he was sleeping," said Whitford, lowering his head.
Then, on Oct. 29, Whitford's girlfriend, Gina Natalie Anderson, fell unconscious after using the drug.
"I started to hear a gurgling in her chest. Her pulse got really weak so I turned her [on her] side, drained her lungs out — this liquid kept coming out. Then I started administering CPR while waiting for the paramedics to come."
The 37-year-old mother of three died from a toxic supply of the drug, Whitford said.
He regrets that he didn't have a naloxone kit with him. He'd used naloxone — a medicine that rapidly reverses the effects of opioids — once before to revive his girlfriend after an overdose.
"She promised my mom, myself and all our other friends that she'd never touch it again," he said.
The Winnipeg Fire Paramedic Service says while down is not a new drug, its use appears to be growing in Winnipeg lately.
Paramedics are regularly seeing patients who have taken a toxic supply of the drug or overdosed, the service says.
Numbers provided by the fire-paramedic service show a 125 per cent increase in the number of patients given naloxone from between 2016 and Nov. 1 of this year.
WATCH | Concerns about rise in opiate-related calls:
The service says the amount of naloxone needed to save patients has risen, indicating the substances being taken are more lethal than in the past.
"We're seeing a very toxic drug supply," said Cory Guest, public education co-ordinator for the Winnipeg Fire Paramedic Service.
"What that means is they obviously can't control what that dose looks like, so the lethality of these substances that we're seeing seems to be worsening."
Guest said a big problem is that people who use street drugs often don't know exactly what they're getting and sellers don't know what they're selling.
236 drug-related deaths so far this year
"You in theory could have a drug like cocaine that's been dyed different colours as well," Guest said.
"So gone are the days that you can look at what you're getting … and likely know what it is. That's not the case today."
The Office of the Chief Medical Examiner doesn't keep track of how many people have died from down, but said from January to July this year, 236 deaths were linked to drugs.
Opioids, fentanyl, methamphetamine and cocaine are all being found in victims who've died.
Whitford wants to see a police crackdown on drug dealers.
"The people that sell stuff to kill other people, they should be treated like an actual crime," he said.
"If someone sells you something that's going to kill you and … [you] die, that person should be charged for murder. That's what I'd like to see being done."
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