In less than a day the hundreds of empty bottles of methadone found along the Cobourg Creek were cleaned up.
Today’s Northumberland were contacted Thursday about a large quantity of what appeared to be empty methadone vials located between the CN and CP railway tracks in Cobourg.
On Friday, the Canadian Addiction Treatment Centres contacted Today’s Northumberland and by late morning all the empty vials were cleaned up.
Clinic Lead Wilhelmina Barnes who is based out of the Picton office of Change Heath Care which operates under the umbrella of Canadian Addiction Treatment Centres immediately drove to Cobourg and was shown where the vials were located.
Most of the identification on the bottles had been torn off, but there were a few that listed the pharmacy and name of the physician.
Methadone gives a person who is opioid dependant a 24 to 36-hour window of withdrawal free to improve the quality of their lives.
“There may be a small amount of residue in the bottles that someone, who might find themselves opioid dependant in a crisis and unable to secure any other source of some sort of an opiate might resort to this to alleviate their withdrawal,” said Barnes
The vials were ones that have either been returned to the clinic located at 1011 Elgin Street West or used at the clinic and disposed of in the garbage.
Prescriptions on the bottle that were legible had the date March 2018 when the prescription was issued, but since then Barnes said they now have a private company picking up the vials.
“For a period of time they were being placed by the custodial services in the building in the general trash and perhaps they were taken from there.”
With the physicians name on a few of the bottles, Barnes said, “there is no reason to believe that they would have come from anywhere else.”
“It’s not something that could happen again and the issue has been resolved.”
There were no needles found in the debris and Barnes assures there is no bio-hazard.
Director of Operations for Canadian Addiction Treatment Centres, Kate Johnston said, “I am truly sorry that the incident occurred.”
“Our goal as an organization is to reduce this stigma associated with treatment (the only proven way to help people addicted to opioids) and to provide a comprehensive, collaborative, compassionate care setting where we can work with other care providers to ensure that patients get the care they need to stay healthy and avoid the toxic street drug supply that is killing people.”
Johnston said Opioid Agonist Treatment clinics have sometimes been controversial and subject to judgement and stigma, along with their patients by providing opioid substitution therapy for people who are addicted to opioids.
“It is unfortunate that we contributed to an already stigmatized image with this event. Our patients deserve and need us to fight the stigma associated with opioid use disorder and OAT so to contribute to anything that contravenes that is a disservice to the very people we are committed to serving.”
Change Health Care has seven different locations operating in south eastern Ontario, with Cobourg’s location being the furthest west location.
Author: Pete Fisher
Has been a photojournalist for over 30-years and have been honoured to win numerous awards for photography and writing over the years. Best selling author for the book Highway of Heroes - True Patriot Love
