Law-enforcement seizures reveal fentanyl’s creep into heroin and now cocaine

published on March 19, 2019 by Travis Lupick in Georgia Straight

On March 19, Vancouver Coastal Health used its drug-contamination-alerts system to issue a rare warning about cocaine.

“Powder cocaine tested at Insite found to contain cocaine and fentanyl,” the text message reads. “Sold in East Van as white powder with brown chunks.”

According to federal data supplied at the Straight’s request, in 2018, the dangerous synthetic opioid fentanyl appeared in 3.3 percent of cocaine samples that law-enforcement agencies sent to Health Canada’s Drug Analysis Service (DAS). That’s up from 2.5 percent the previous year, 0.94 percent in 2016, and 0.31 percent the year before that. The numbers are low but rising…

View the full article