Winnipeggers are being warned about the presence of animal tranquilizers and sedatives in the city’s drug supply. Nurse practitioner Heidi Pharand-Joven, who works for Siloam Mission’s opioid addictions program, said her clinic is continuing to see fentanyl-related issues. She explained one of the problems is that the synthetic opioid is often mixed with benzodiazepines or animal tranquilizers, which makes it less effective against opioid antagonists. “Naloxone, Narcan is not as effective because it doesn’t have any effect on the animal tranquilizers or the benzodiazepines,” she explained in an interview with Your Morning Winnipeg on Monday. “(Opioid antagonists are) still the best way. It’s still really important to educate people on how to use Naloxone and make sure that people who are using substances or who are with people who are using substances have Narcan kits available on them.” Pharand-Joven’s warning comes on International Overdose Awareness Day — a day created to raise awareness and take action against overdoses. According to numbers from the Manitoba government, more than 350 Manitobans died from substance-related deaths between January and November 2025. Beyond the overdoses, Pharand-Joven said injection drug use is also contributing to the province’s high rate of HIV infection. “When I’m working with clients at Siloam, that is definitely something that we talk about: infectious disease … You can’t treat one without the other,” she said “We can’t have these continued siloed approaches for treating addiction and substance-use disorders. We have to consider all the other risk factors.” In May 2026, the Manitoba government declared a public health emergency to fight the spread of HIV. The province reported that HIV rates had been steadily increasing to a high of 328 new cases in 2025. With files from CTV’s Rachel Lagacé
