Ottawa Inner City Health began providing a small group of users with "clean" drugs in September following a rapid rise in the number of overdoses from street drugs contaminated with fentanyl over the summer. said Dr. Jeff Turnbull, the chief physician for Ottawa Inner City Health, which provides health care to the homeless. We're just trying to scrape together whatever we can scrape together to make it happen," said Wendy Muckle, the executive director of Ottawa Inner City Health. She estimates the cost to run the larger program for 40 drug users would be an estimated $400,000 annually. Although Ottawa may be the first city outside of Vancouver to give opioids to drug users, Turnbull said other cities in Canada will shortly follow suit.

Source: CBC News October 26, 2017 21:07 UTC