Workers on the front lines of Ottawa's opioid crisis say the life-saving antidote naloxone is increasingly ineffective because drug users are showing up with lethal and often unknown combinations of dangerous narcotics in their systems. - Wendy Muckle, Ottawa Inner City Health"Increasingly, that's not working out that well for us because the drugs seem to have other things in them. Marc-Antoine Deschamps with the Ottawa Paramedic Service says drug users can never really know what's in the street drugs they take. "It can contain caffeine, it can contain cocaine, speed ... [and] create an overdose that will not be responsive to naloxone." Drug users are reminded not to take drugs alone, and to call 911 whenever naloxone is administered.

Source: CBC News October 15, 2018 21:00 UTC