Merritt RCMP have confirmed that two local residents who died last month in Merritt overdosed on the powerful opiate fentanyl.

Const. Tracy Dunmore told the Herald that police have received confirmation from the coroner’s office that the drug was believed to be the cause of death in both instances.

A woman passed away after taking fentanyl sometime during the last weekend in March and just days later a 28-year-old male passed away after taking a mix of fentanyl and cocaine.

Merritt police know of seven overdoses that have occurred in Merritt so far in 2016, including these two fentanyl-caused deaths.

At least four of the overdoses have involved this drug.

Back in February, two people overdosed on what police suspect was fentanyl. The two were revived using the antidote naloxone. That incident was the local police force’s first contact with fentanyl.

Fentanyl overdoses also claimed the lives of three people in neighbouring Kamloops this past January.

Dunsmore said that it’s not surprising to see fentanyl appear in Merritt, given its emergence in larger centres.

Fentanyl making headlines

“For the extreme drugs in town, they’re all coming from the Lower Mainland. Everybody knows who the dealers are and who the big players are, and it’s all coming from the same sources that Kamloops is getting,” said Dunsmore.

Over the course of the past year, fentanyl has been making headlines around B.C. for its potency, and number of overdoses and deaths it has been linked with.

It has been identified in toxicology reports of dozens of overdose deaths in B.C. since last December.

In Alberta, it was linked to more than 200 deaths in 2015.

A synthetic opiate, fentanyl is more potent than morphine. As with all opiates — heroin, morphine, codeine and thebaine — it binds to the body’s opiate receptors, causing elevated dopamine in the brain’s reward areas and creates a state of euphoria and relaxation.

The B.C. Corners Service reports fentanyl presence is growing annually. In 2012, it was found in fewer than five per cent of fatal overdoses. By 2014, the rate had increased to 25 per cent and, in the first eight months of 2015, it was found in 35 per cent of illicit-drug overdose deaths in the province.

Retired pharmacist David Quinn told the Herald fentanyl is like any other opiate.

“It’s the same old story. If you take a handful of any kind of opiate, you’re going to end up with a depressed respiratory system, which means the brain tells the lungs you don’t have to breathe anymore,” Quinn said.

He said fentanyl isn’t dangerous because of its potency, but rather it’s the dosage one takes that can be harmful.

“You just don’t know what you’re getting, and there’s no quality control, so one tablet could contain a huge amount and another contain very little,” said Dr. Jane Buxton, harm reduction lead for the BC Centre for Disease Control.

Dealers known to mix with other drugs

The Canadian Community Epidemiology Network on Drug Use (CCENDU) released a bulletin last August saying that according to the RCMP, fentanyl is finding its way into the illicit Canadian drug market through the diversion of pharmaceutical fentanyl products and the smuggling of fentanyl powder into the country, most notably from China.

Fentanyl powder is either pressed into pills by drug dealers in illicit labs or sold, or mixed with other drugs.

The pills are made to look like Oxycontin and the powder can resemble heroin.

Dealers have been known to mix fentanyl into drugs like cocaine, marijuana and heroin to enhance the potency.

“Fentanyl has been around for a long time and used in the medical field, but this specific type of fentanyl is used for cutting into other drugs because it’s cheap,” Dunsmore said. “From my understanding it come from China, it’s very cheap to buy, it’s cheap to cut, so people are putting it in just to make more money,” she said.

Naloxone kits, which can be used to reverse an opioid overdose can be acquired locally at Interior Chemical Dependency at 250-315-7617.

— with files from Kamloops This Week

This story was updated at 5:58 p.m. April 13 to include information about the drug fentanyl.