The low cost of fentanyl on the street makes this opioid a real scourge, according to the abbot and founder of the organization Notre-Dame de la rue, Claude Paradis.
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In an interview with QUB radio, the man who himself lived on the street clarified that fentanyl is mixed with cocaine. So people are going to take cocaine and replace it with fentanyl made in clandestine labs.
“For street gangs, it costs them much less. They’ll cut cocaine with that. In the street it can be sold in the form of tablets, stamps, but especially in powder”, he mentioned at the microphone of Richard Martineau.
Mr. Paradis, who has worked with street people for more than 30 years, added that synthetic opiates made in laboratories are 100 times stronger than morphine and 50 times stronger than heroin.
“It affects the respiratory system and it attacks the neurons. The seller does not even know how much fentanyl he is selling while the injector takes the same dose as usual leading to an overdose.”
Asked whether a citizen should give money to a homeless person, the street lender recommends paying him a meal.
Moreover, people have less and less money on them, a situation that has an impact on homeless people.
“They are making a lot less money than before. During the COVID crisis, people on the streets mightn’t even get groceries, because merchants demanded a card. This situation leads to more theft and violence. There are old people who are afraid to go out in broad daylight.
Unending
Mr. Paradis affirms that a young person who leaves the youth center at 18 without training, without a job, without an address and without money will find himself on the street.
“He will go to Émilie-Gamelin park. There, organized crime sellers will offer him to sell for them. He will be arrested, will go to prison and will return to the streets followingwards.
In the same vein, he adds that these young people have not known love and have not been appreciated.
“The greatest poverty is to be nobody for at least one other person. What I find the most difficult is to do the funerals of young people who are going to die,” adding that from January to September there were 175 unclaimed deceased persons in Montreal.
