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Ontario police warn of extremely deadly 'purple heroin' on streets

The Canadian Press

Ontario Provincial Police are warning that a drug known as "purple heroin" has turned up in southwestern Ontario.

Constable Ed Sanchuk says drugs seized in January were sent to Health Canada for testing. He says it turns out the drugs were a mix of heroin, morphine, fentanyl and carfentanil.

Carfentanil is 100 times more powerful than fentanyl and 10-thousand times more potent than morphine. Police say as little as two milligrams could be fatal, whether ingested, inhaled or absorbed through the skin.

Sanchuk said even naloxone, which can reverse an opioids overdose, had to be administered multiple times in recent cases before the person came around. He said drugs weighed on the same scale can easily contaminate each other.

The Associated Press is one of the largest and most trusted sources of independent newsgathering, supplying a steady stream of news to its members, international subscribers and commercial customers. AP is neither privately owned nor government-funded; instead, it's a not-for-profit news cooperative owned by its American newspaper and broadcast members.
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