Manitoba has no intention of banning pill presses

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This article was published 24/11/2016 (3022 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A country store on the north shore of Ontario’s Lake Huron will sell you a pill press for $78.29, shipping included.

It takes “three seconds flat” to produce a 10-mm Aspirin-sized pill, the owner of Boomer’s Country Store in Bruce Mines boasts on eBay.ca. And the press comes with a free happy-face stamp to dress up the product.

That was just one of close to 1,300 pill press devices available Thursday on eBay, depending what words go in the search line — and anyone with a credit card can purchase one and it’ll show up in the mail or via courier in a few days.

Manitoba New Democrats want Health Minister Kelvin Goertzen to ban the sale of pill presses as one way of slowing down the production, distribution and deadly consequences of fentanyl and other opioid drugs.

B.C. and Alberta have banned the sale of presses, NDP critic Matt Wiebe said.

“This is the way to go in Manitoba,” he said.

Goertzen said this week that Manitoba has confirmed nine fentanyl deaths among 24 opioid-related deaths in the first five months of 2016. There have been more suspected opioid-related deaths since then, including two last Sunday.

“This is not just a crisis, it is a public-health emergency,” Wiebe told the legislature Wednesday. “The health minister is shirking responsibility for an out-of-control fentanyl crisis.”

Goertzen told the legislature there is no point in a provincial ban on pill presses unless the federal government enacts a national ban.

“We have been saying for several weeks there has to be restriction of pill presses in Canada. Drug dealers don’t respect borders,” Goertzen said. “The former (NDP) government never talked about it — we’ve been on board for a long time.”

Wiebe said some people use the presses legally to make supplements at home, which is the market Boomer’s Country Store is targeting with its offer on eBay.

When drug dealers use them there are no controls and no way to know what’s in them, Wiebe said, echoing Goertzen’s frequent warning that people using drugs may be unaware they’re taking fentanyl.

The products available on eBay are unlikely to interest anyone beyond home-supplement hobbyists; most produce a single pill at a time.

They range from $46.66 for a product sold from Hong Kong to $2,290 for an offer from China.

Boomer’s Country Store points out its item is dishwasher safe, and illustrates its use with garlic cloves being transformed into pills.

Proclaims Boomer’s: “Leaves no shavings or filings in your pill and will not mushroom or bend like lower-priced aluminum or brass punches. Just three sound hits on the top of the ram with your hammer and you have a pill in seconds!”

nick.martin@freepress.mb.ca