Street drug 10,000 times stronger than morphine arrives in Canada

By News Staff

Move over fentanyl, there’s a new drug on the street – and it’s an estimated 10,000 times stronger than morphine.

The drug is called W-18, and CBC News reports that the first seizure of the drug occurred last month in Calgary, prompting the city’s police to put out a warning.

“I can guarantee you, there’s got to be more out there,” Calgary Staff Sgt. Jason Walker told CBC. “We just haven’t seen it yet.”

W-18 is estimated to be 100 times more potent than fentanyl, which is estimated to be 100 times more potent than morphine.

Fentanyl has been considered the “biggest drug trend” of recent memory, with 655 deaths blamed on the drug between 2009 and 2014.


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And with fentanyl booming in Toronto, it’s only a matter of time before we start seeing reports of W-18 appearing on city streets, too.

The biggest problem with W-18, however, is how potent laboratories produce the drug. The margin for error in making a pill that is deadly is microscopically small.

“You’d need very sophisticated measures to be able to produce a street drug that didn’t just kill people that were using it,” said Dr. Evan Wood, Vancouver Coastal Health director for addiction services.

So is W-18 considered the most dangerous drug out there?

Possibly. Bath salts, a synthetic drug with mood-altering and stimulant properties, became a trendy party drug in 2012, but was far more popular in the United States and didn’t have much impact in Canada.

Scopolamine, also called Devil’s Breath, has been isolated to South and Latin America. That drug is truly a frightening organic powder in which users apparently become susceptible to suggestion but don’t remember anything they did after the high has worn off.

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