When you first walk into the Medicine Shoppe Pharmacy in Vernon, it’s like any neighbourhood pharmacy: it has your over-the-counter drugs for cold and flu season, your daily essential vitamins and prescription drugs.
But behind the counter is something unique: a drug checking service for anyone to use. It's the first service of its kind offered at a pharmacy in the B.C. Interior.
“Drug checking services allow us, in the face of the toxic drug crisis, to monitor what is happening with the illicit drug supply. Otherwise, we don’t know until it’s too late,” noted Interior Health’s manager of harm reduction Jessica Bridgeman.
Drug checking services offered by the pharmacy
Since June 2023, the Medicine Shoppe Pharmacy has been performing the service.
“We provide the drug checking service, which means people can bring in any sort of illicit substance and we test them,” said pharmacy and drug checking technician with the Medicine Shoppe Pharmacy, Veronica Riguedell.
“We run them through an FTIR machine, which gives me a spectrograph, or a picture, of what the drug looks like with light infused through it. I’m able to use that, with my libraries, to break down what substances are inside of that particular drug sample that’s been brought in.”
Reducing stigma around drug checking
Interior Health’s hope, as is the pharmacy’s, is that this new service will reduce stigma around using substances and allows people to safely check their drugs.
Being at a pharmacy creates a unique opportunity to be even more discreet than some of our other locations. You could be at a pharmacy for a lot of different reasons, so we hope that increases people’s trust to come in and check their drugs, and not feel people know why they’re here.
“We're in a unique position, because we have the opportunity to enable more people to access this service who would otherwise be concerned about stigma attached to other places the service has been offered before,” adds Veronica.
More information on drug checking
Anyone who would like to have their drugs checked is welcome to visit the Medicine Shoppe Pharmacy in Vernon, or visit drugchecking.ca for information about other locations.
People should be able to know what they’re using. With that information, they can make informed decisions about how they want to use, how much they want to use, or whether or not they want to use it at all.
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