Newfoundland RCMP issue warning on ‘extremely lethal’ street-drug mixture after making seizure

Police in Newfoundland are warning about an “extremely lethal” street-drug combination being seized in that province for the first time, after a spate of similar public warnings by other Canadian provinces and U.S. cities over the past year.

This seizure of medetomidine-tainted fentanyl comes amid growing alarm in North America about that particularly volatile mixture of chemical opioids and animal sedatives.

Fentanyl is a notoriously deadly street drug that contributes to thousands of fatal overdoses in Canada each year. It is at the centre of a years-long opioid overdose crisis across North America, but its dealers and manufacturers are now adding unpredictability by mixing in veterinary sedatives.

Such adulterants can prolong drug highs, but they cause risks to drug users because unlike fentanyl there are no known reversal agents.

There has already been growing concern about the animal tranquillizer xylazine, which is known as tranq, being cut into street drugs such as fentanyl. Over the past year, public-health officials monitoring overdoses in Toronto, Vancouver, Chicago and Philadelphia have sounded alarm about the presence of medetomidine, which health officials have warned may be 200 times stronger than xylazine.

In Newfoundland, the Mounties issued public warnings last week after they first seized baggies of a blue-tinged drug on Dec. 17 and then shipped the substances to Health Canada for analysis.

The RCMP said in a news release that a lab report came back last week and confirmed the substances as “a mixture of fentanyl and medetomidine.” The release cited Health Canada as confirming that it was the first time medetomidine had been seized in Newfoundland and Labrador.

The statement said that the drugs were taken from an alleged 39-year-old dealer in St. John’s who had a sawed-off shotgun in his car.

“Medetomidine is a veterinary tranquillizer approved for surgical use in animals and is not safe for human consumption,” the RCMP in Newfoundland said. “Mixing this substance with fentanyl, which on its own is highly potent and dangerous, makes this an extremely lethal combination.”

Medetomidine is increasingly showing up on Canadian streets. For example, a Health Canada document published in late 2023 said the substance was found as a novel “cutting agent” in a Brantford, Ont., drug bust three years ago.

Now, the drug is being linked to mass overdoses.

“Medetomidine detection first increased sharply in the unregulated supply in Ontario and Quebec in early 2024, and more recently in British Columbia,” the Canadian Community Epidemiology Network on Drug Use said in a recent backgrounder. “Health care professionals, service providers and people who use drugs need to know about the strong sedative effects of medetomidine and the complications it creates for reversing drug poisonings.”

Medical officials in Toronto, who sounded an alarm about the spread of xylazine back in 2020, issued some of their first public warnings about the newer additive just over a year ago.

Medetomidine also prompted public-health warnings in Vancouver last summer.

The U.S. cities of Philadelphia and Chicago last year both issued warnings about medetomidine factoring into mass overdoses. The additive was seen in Maryland’s street-drug supply months earlier.