Powerful drug carfentanil detected at supervised consumption site

Potentially-deadly carfentanil was detected Wednesday in the street drug known as “blue fentanyl” in testing at the Sandy Hill Community Health Centre.

Rob Boyd, director of the Oasis program at the centre, warned drug users via Twitter to use drugs at supervised consumption sites and not alone, to avoid mixing drugs and to carry opioid antidote naloxone.

Carfentanil was previously found in a rock of crack cocaine tested by the health centre last summer.

It’s 100 times more powerful than the synthetic opioid fentanyl, which is also routinely found in other street drugs and was linked by officials to a string of recent overdose deaths involving cocaine.

Boyd, who tagged his warning Wednesday with the hashtag “toxic supply,’” said last summer that more than 1,000 people a week inject drugs at four supervised injection sites in Ottawa and that with an increasingly dangerous drug supply were vital to keeping people who use drugs alive.

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