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Nipissing West OPP issue warning after six possible overdoses over the holidays

Police suspect powerful opioid 'purple heroin' to be the culprit
2018-12-11 SSP Suspected Purple Heroin
Suspected purple heroin seized by Simcoe Police in this undated file photo.

Nipissing West OPP have issued a warning to drug users after responding to six possible overdoses calls over the past week.

Police did not say if any of the people who appear to have overdosed passed away, but they suspect the cause to be so-called 'purple heroin.'

The drug is a mixture of heroin and fentanyl or cafentanil, two incredibly powerful opioids. Fentanyl, police said, is 40 times stronger than heroin, while carfentanil is 100 times stronger.
 
"Access to several extremely powerful opioids is not limited to larger cities," police said in a news release this week. "These drugs have infiltrated every corner of our province in some form or another."

OPP are warning users of illicit opioids that "there is no way ... to know exactly what substances are in illicit drugs." Carfentanil is so powerful an amount as small as a grain of sand could be lethal, police said. 

"Samples from the same batch of drugs could differ in content enough that one user survives and another does not."