COLLINS – Fentanyl crisis could hamper good Samaritans

SO THE QUESTION IS — you see someone lying in the street, obviously in distress. Maybe they’re not breathing. Maybe they are unconscious. You aren’t sure what to do.

Your first response is to try and help. You call 911. The person on the line suggests you perform CPR. But you see some white powder on the person’s clothing. You think it might be fentanyl. Now you think perhaps the victim has suffered an overdose.

You worry you might be exposed to the opioid. So you do nothing. That pretty much describes the scenario a Manitoba postal worker went through recently when he found a woman in a lobby of a building where he was delivering mail.

The worker refused to perform CPR.

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Doug Collins is the Director of News, Information and Television Operations at CFJC-TV. Doug has been on the air in Kamloops since 1970. He was presented with a Lifetime Achievement Award by the Radio-Television News Directors Association of Canada in 2008.