Take home drug checking strips are now available at 30 locations in the province.

These are strips which check for fentanyl and benzodiazepine. The goal is to help curb the number of overdose deaths in the province. The government announced today that the test strips are available to the general public for the purpose of at home drug checking.

Health officials say Fentanyl is 50 to 100 times more toxic than other opioids and of 149 confirmed accidental drug toxicity deaths in Saskatchewan in 2021, 72 per cent involved fentanyl which cannot be seen, smelled or tasted.

And mixing benzodiazepines (benzos) with opioids increases the risk of overdose, because they both have sedative properties. As well, naloxone, which normally reverses the effects of an opioid overdose, is not effective in counteracting benzos.

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