Interior Health has put a Drug Advisory regarding fake Dilaudid tablets being sold on the streets.
Medical Health Officer DR. Carol Fenton said they had two different drug checking sites in two different municipalities received samples that looked exactly like this tablet but they were both fake.
“What was in them was something called isotonitazene which is similar in potency to fentanyl, much more potent than would be expected from a dilaudid tablet. Since they’re fake we don’t know what kind of quality they are, we don’t know how much is in there.”
DR. Fenton said it’s really dangerous because it’s not picked up by the fentanyl test strip.
“So we need to use our machines that can actually analyze the compound and detect beyond fentanyl to tell whether or not they’re fake. I’m really worried about people who might buy some of these expecting that they’re pharmaceutical grade and then get accidentally poisoned.”
DR. Fenton said since they can’t know exactly how much isotonitazene is in there, because they’re fake and we don’t know who made them, it could be one or two times more potent all the way up to twenty to fifty times more potent.
“It’s that variability, that unpredictability that makes it really unsafe. This is the challenge with the unregulated drug crisis and drug poisoning crisis,” DR. Fenton added.
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