Four kilos of deadly drug seized
Synthetic opioid W-18 is not illegal, but is far more potent than fentanyl
Addictions outreach workers say Alberta’s public health response to powerful street drugs like the W-18 recently seized in Edmonton is lagging, even as overdose deaths continue to climb at a staggering rate.
“(Overdose) is a huge issue, it’s massive, and it feels like it’s not being taken terribly seriously at this point,” said Marliss Taylor, program manager at Streetworks, an outreach service that works with drug users in Edmonton.
W-18, a synthetic opioid not regulated in Canada, is 100 times more powerful than fentanyl. There were 272 fentanyl-related deaths in Alberta last year, and nearly 500 since 2012.
On Friday, an internal email sent to health practitioners from a government addiction adviser and leaked to Postmedia News warned there could be an increase in the number of overdoses and deaths following a police seizure of four kilograms of W-18 powder in the Edmonton area.
Taylor said she wasn’t surprised by the information because front line workers are already hearing that W-18 is on the streets from users. But she was surprised that nothing came out publicly about the seizure until Wednesday.
“I also think knowledge is power, and if people at least can be forewarned, that perhaps we could avoid some overdose deaths that would happen needlessly,” Taylor said.
The Alberta Law Enforcement Response Teams confirmed Wednesday it seized the W-18 during a fentanyl investigation in December. Samples were sent to a Health Canada lab for testing and were formally confirmed as W-18 on Tuesday, the first powder seizure of the drug in Alberta, said Staff Sgt. Dave Knibbs. ALERT had preliminary information about two weeks earlier that it was possibly W-18, and from there, front line workers were eventually notified.
“Theoretically, a four-kilogram seizure of W-18 could have produced hundreds of millions of illicit pills,” Knibbs told a news conference Wednesday.
“Fentanyl has taken far too many lives across the province and W-18 represents an even more significant threat.”
Health Minister Sarah Hoffman was only made aware that the powder seized was indeed W-18 on Tuesday.
She said the email sent to front line workers Friday was premature.
“People were drawing some early conclusions,” she said. While the information shared in the email “was done with the best of intentions,” it wasn’t accurate, she said.
W-18 is not scheduled in the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, meaning it’s “not illegal to possess or distribute in Canada right now,” Knibbs said.
“There are other charges that are being looked at as part of the ongoing investigation,” he said.
Health Canada has proposed adding W-18 to the act. The Alberta government wrote a letter to the federal government Wednesday urging for the process to be accelerated.
Jennifer Vanderschaeghe, executive director of Turning Point, another organization that assists drug users, said she already knew W-18 was in Red Deer months before the government warning last week.
“When seasoned drug users, people who inject drugs and have for five, 10, 15 years, come in and say, ‘This stuff is scary,’ our job is to listen to that,” she said.
“The government’s response is slow. I think they absolutely care about this and are working hard on this, (but) I think our systems in Alberta aren’t as fast and nimble as I’d like them to be,” she said.