News that the deadly drug carfentanil has turned up in a Vancouver drug bust has those who work with drug-dependent persons here in Victoria extremely concerned.
Carfentanil was developed as a sedative for elephants and is 100 times more toxic than the opiod fentanyl, which is already being blamed for a record number of overdoses in B.C. and other provinces.
Grant McKenzie at Our Place says while carfentanil has not yet been confirmed on the island, that doesn't mean it's not here, and drug users are being warned about it.
McKenzie says what's scary is that it's not known how the opiod blocker narcan - or naloxone -- will affect carfenantil, since even with fentanyl the antidote often has to be administered more than once:
"Sometimes we have to administer that 2, 3, sometimes 4 times to get that person responsive and breathing again. And we haven't, as far as we know, we haven't encountered carfentanil yet so we don't even know how it will react toi this lifesaving drug."
McKenzie says drug users don't do fentanyal or carfentanil on purpose -- they think they are buying heroine, or whatever drug they usually use, not realizing it's been laced with the more powerful opiod. He has strong words for those bringing carfentanil into the country:
"I mean basically the people who are bringing in carfentanil are mass murders. I mean that's really the point it's got to."
Meantime Our Place is administering narcan at least twice a day right now thanks to fentany-laced drugs. McKenzie says because there's already such a spike in overdose deaths due to fentanyl it will be difficult to know when deaths from carfentanil start materializing.