Community Connections in Revelstoke is trying to promote a new way to prevent people from dying from using drugs.

Thousands of people are dying every year in the province; two died recently in Revelstoke, one in the fall, and one a few weeks ago. They were using alone.

Erin Maclachlan, co-director for community outreach and development, says she doesn’t know what kind of drug they were using but it was likely cocaine, opioids or crack.

The last time people died in Revelstoke from toxic drugs was in 2021, and Community Connections responded by providing harm reduction methods like clean needles and pipes, naloxone kits and training to use them.

Now Community Connections is what’s called a registered distributed drug checking site. It means Maclachlan can collect samples of illicit drugs used in the community. She can gather up a small amount, keep the sample in a little safe in her office, and send them off to a lab run by Interior Health.

She can take samples of the drugs before people use them, or collect residue from baggies afterwards.

The idea is to create a database of the types of drugs used in Revelstoke, and the toxins that may be present in them.

That way health care providers can be ready to respond if a certain toxin is present in Revelstoke, and toxins can be tracked across the province.

So far, Maclachlan hasn’t had any takers on her offer to test their drugs.

“Most people laugh, which I totally understand,” she said.

It’s because people who use drugs are criminalized, and the story has always been if you use you’re a bad person and a drain on the economy, Maclachlan says.

But she noticed when Community Connections first started offering clean pipes and needles and naloxone kits, people didn’t use them either. Now they’re out in the community.

The testing is anonymous. Maclachlan says the hope is that the mindset shifts, so that instead of thinking it will get them in trouble, people using drugs will give samples to be tested as a way to keep the community safe.

Click here to listen to a full interview with Erin Maclachlan: