B.C. addictions specialist warns against 'mass hysteria' but admits W-18 'very scary'

A B.C. addictions expert is warning people not to become hysterical about W-18, but is urging drug users to protect themselves by taking tinytest doses of any opioidthey buy illegally.

It's a very scary situation. We certainly don't know a lot about it quite yet.-Seonaid Nolan, addictions specialist,B.C. Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDs.

W-18is a synthetic opioid painkiller developed in Alberta decades ago and abandoned, but now it's showing up again, and health officials are warning it's 100 times more powerful that Fentanyl, which has already become a health emergency.

Police in Delta yesterday warned people to be extra vigilant after they confiscated drugs containing W-18 after searching labs in Burnaby, Richmond and Surrey.

A few tiny salt-like grains of fentanyl are enough to get a person high. W-18 is even more potent.

"It's a very scary situation. We certainly don't know a lot about it quite yet... there is the potential for it to have devastating consequences,"said Seonaid Nolan, an addictions specialist and research scientist with the B.C. Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDs.

"But you want to avoid mass hysteria or over-sensationalizing, but [drug users need to recognize]what you may be ingesting you never quite know," said Nolan.

100 times more toxic than fentanyl

Nolan urges addicts and users to take smaller test doses of any street drug they buy, to protect against taking the potentially deadly substance.

"See if the potency is what you are used to," she said.

W-18 can be smoked, snorted or injected and has similar effects to any other opioid, but specifics on the experimental drug are sketchy.

Addictions experts are urging care:

• Medical officials should be on the lookout for an opiate overdose, aware that it could be W-18
• Even if patients present as negative, it could be false, asW-18is so untested
• Addicts need to take test doses, and carry Naloxonekits

Nolan says not many studies have been done and there is no clear understanding about why the drug is having a resurgence now after 30 years.

Lack of science done on mystery drug

W-18 showed up in Europe in 2013, then migrated to Canada, seized in Alberta house party busts in 2015.

Health officials were already urging addicts to carry Narcan (Naloxone) kits, to resuscitate in case of overdoses. The opiate-blocker can save people who overdose on Fentanyl.

• B.C. declares public health emergency after 200 overdose deaths in 2016
• Opiate-blocker naloxone delisted by Health Canada, could soon be available without prescription

But some harm reduction experts say it's unclear if Naloxonewill have the same effect on people who overdose using W-18, as research on the drug is lacking. It's unclear ifW-18 binds to the same brain receptors as heroin, morphine or fentanyl.

"Given the limited research that has been done on W-18we can't know for certain, but there is no reason to believe that [Naloxone]wouldn't act like it does on other opiates," said Nolan.

University of Alberta professors developed the drug in the 1980s, but it was never lab-tested on humans.

Police say that testing ishappening nowon Canadian drug users.