Suspected elephant painkiller found in Winnipeg drug raid

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This article was published 15/09/2016 (3664 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Police have a man in custody and a drug seizure of a substance believed to be carfentanil, an opioid for elephants that’s 100 times more potent than fentanyl.

Police, armed with a search warrant, raided a West End hotel Monday and seized 1,477 doses investigators suspect is carfentanil with an estimated street value of $30,000.

If it is confirmed to be the powerful opioid, it will be the first bust of its kind in the city. Police expect the lab results within the next few days.

Grayson Richard Parris, 37, of Winnipeg faces several drug-related charges, including trafficking.

“Carfentanil is an opioid drug that can easily cause overdose death or long-term health problems (for) humans,” stated a warning about the drug that was attached to the police bulletin on the seizure.

“Carfentanil, which is also known as wildnil, has an analgesic potency that’s 10,000 times stronger than morphine and 100 times more potent than fentanyl, according to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA),” states the website Pharmacy Times.

Police urged drug users to contact Street Connections, the mobile public health service run by the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority. They’re based at 496 Hargrave St. and they give out free kits of the overdose antidote Naloxene. It can also be purchased at some pharmacies, without a prescription.

“If you are using heroin, fentanyl, carfentanil or any other similar drug, it is important you have a Naloxone overdose prevention kit with you at all times. Because carfentanil is so toxic, you may need several doses of Naloxone to reverse an overdose,” the warning stated.

The bulletin noted the police took the unusual step to warn the public before they’d gotten the test results back to confirm the seizure is, in fact, carfentanil, because the drug is so dangerous.

“I’ll probably say a couple of hours late today to make sure we have everything we need,” said Street Connections nurse clinician Shelley Marshall.

Nurses at Street Connections pack two doses per kit of Naloxone, the drug that reverses overdoses.

“The medication itself is about $7 a dose and we put two vials in the kit. If you get carfentanil you might need two doses to reverse the overdose,” Marshall said.

Word that carfentanil may have reached Winnipeg is alarming.

Even touching the stuff can be deadly, Marshall warned.

“We thought Oxy was bad. Then we had fentanyl and now we have carfentanil,” Marshall said.

“That would kill a police officer if he or she put their hands in it, and its being absorbed through the skin. It’s an occupational hazard busting labs and taking in dealers,” she said.

“I don’t think there’s been a time in history when it’s been more dangerous to experiment with drugs. I’m so worried about youth today, what they have to step into. The market has gone wild. There’s always been a lot of harm associated with these changing drug markets but they are just exploding,” Marshall said.

The kits with the drug to reverse overdoses is a new program that launched last December.

As police put out the warning about carfentanil, front line staff at Street Connections were still getting the word about the dangers of fentanyl, its derivatives and the kits that can reverse overdoses.

“We need more sites. There’s a couple of pharmacies thinking of getting up and running and selling (Naloxene). We don’t even have provincial funding for our program. What costs a lot is human resources, training someone, on how to take a history. The kits themselves are not that expense, about $35 a kit but nursing hours are expensive and our nurses are extremely busy. We deal with everything, syphilis, overdose, inject drug use, crystal meth…” Marshall said.

alexandra.paul@freepress.mb.ca