Pink heroin proves deadly

Vancouver drug users warned after 16 overdoses reported over weekend

The new menace on the mean streets of Vancouver’s notorious Downtown Eastside is pink and packs a deadly punch.

Pink- coloured heroin laced with fentanyl is being blamed for 16 overdoses in Vancouver over the weekend, and health officials and police are bracing for further emergency responses to a problem they feel is reaching near- epidemic proportions.

At the Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users on Monday, president Hugh Lampkin said they are training more people who live and work with drug addicts in the Downtown Eastside in how to use Naloxone ( Narcan) when a person has an overdose of a potent pharmaceutical opioid such as fentanyl.

All of the 16 overdoses occurred in a 24- hour period, most happened in the Downtown Eastside and all appear to be related to fentanyl being put in the pink heroin.

Fentanyl is 100 times stronger than morphine and warnings have been going out for months that street drugs are being laced with the potent substance that is believed to be made in places like Southeast Asia, Mexico and South America.

“It seems to be a widespread problem right now,” said Lampkin.

Lampkin believes much of the heroin circulating in the Downtown Eastside has fentanyl added.

“The chances are high,” he said. “It is in the 80 per cent range that there is probably fentanyl in it,” he said.

But Lampkin also points out fentanyl is also in most of the other street drugs available, even pot. “It is in almost everything,” he said.

Lampkin believes the fentanyl is added by the mid- level dealers before it moves into the Downtown Eastside and is sold on the streets.

Vancouver Coastal Health’s Dr. Mark Lysyshyn said the organization continues to put out the warnings that fentanyl is showing up in all the illicit drugs that can be bought on the street.