(VICE) – A highly dangerous synthetic street drug that increases the chance of a fatal overdose is on the rise in Canada. Doctors have warned that the recently-emerged “benzo dope”, which most often contains a mixture of fentanyl and black-market benzodiazepines,
leaves drug users even more prone to fatal overdoses than fentanyl alone – a drug that has already fuelled a drug death epidemic across the U.S. and Canada.
Fatal overdoses are more likely to occur after using benzo dope because the life-saving opioid overdose reversal drug, naloxone, is not effective against benzos. Benzo dope, also known as ‘purple heroin’, is most commonly dark purple, blue, and orange, but it has been found to be other colors.
Drug forensic experts in British Columbia found that in October last year one in six (16 percent) of fentanyl deals were cut with benzodiazepines – a type of drug not usually found cut into opioids – compared to five percent last January and zero before 2019. The most common benzo identified in benzo dope was etizolam, a super potent benzo that is fuelling record drug death rates in Scotland. READ MORE
