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‘Dose as small as a grain of sand can kill you’: alarm after Canada carfentanil bust

Lab tests eventually revealed 42kg of the substance to be carfentanil – a drug the US Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) has described as “crazy dangerous” and which authorities in the US have flagged as as potential chemical weapon. The local police force had unwittingly stumbled across what is believed to be the largest volume of the opioid ever seized in North America.​

“An amount as small as a grain of sand can kill you,” Dr Karen Grimsrud, Alberta’s chief medical officer, told reporters after traces of carfentanil were found in the bodies of two men who had overdosed. “Carfentanil is about 100 times more toxic than fentanyl and about 10,000 times more toxic than morphine.” Authorities in Cincinnati said the drug was one possible explanation for why 174 people in the US city had overdosed in the span of six days. Dealers were now cutting carfentanil into heroin and other drugs to offer users a hard-hitting, longer-lasting high, officials said as they scrambled to shore up supplies of the antidote. While it often takes just one or two shots of naloxone to counteract a heroin overdose, overdoses involving carfentanil can take half a dozen shots or more … He pointed to North America’s crackdown on drugs to explain dealers’ willingness to embrace carfentanil, which can boost the effects of heroin in just minuscule amounts. “It’s quite necessary in a prohibition environment for drug traffickers to move towards more toxic, smaller chemicals because they’re much easier to traffic,” said Virani.

Original Article (The Guardian):
‘Dose as small as a grain of sand can kill you’: alarm after Canada carfentanil bust
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