Potent new opioid detected in drug supply, prompting warnings from community advocates

According to the Blood Ties Four Directions Centre in Whitehorse, the drug cyclorphine has recently been detected in Whitehorse wastewater samples, prompting the organization to issue an alert to the community.

According to Blood Ties’ executive director, Jill Aalhus, the extreme potency of cyclorphine, which she said is roughly ten times stronger than fentanyl, presents increased risk to users.

“We are concerned about it. It’s particularly dangerous when combined with other sedatives. High doses can [also] be associated with severe opioid overdoses, as well as nausea and vomiting,” Aalhus said.

Aalhus also said that while the overall number of overdoses seen at blood ties’ supervised consumption site has remained relatively stable, blood ties staff have seen a significant increase in the severity of cases.

“It’s not just the prevalence of overdoses, but the severity of overdoses that we were concerned about,” Aalhus said.

“We typically see overdoses where they are quite gradual, but we have seen more unusual presentations of overdoses where people’s oxygen levels are dropping quite rapidly, more so than we’ve probably ever seen before.”

Aalhus said that cyclorphine’s potency also makes it harder to detect with current testing methods as the drug may not be present in great enough concentrations to show up in contemporary safe supply tests.

“It might be difficult to detect through our drug checking program on our FT-IR spectrometer. We don’t know that for sure, [but] that’s something that sometimes is seen with really potent substances,” Aalhus said, adding the drug is so new that other testing methods such as immunoassay testing strips have not yet been developed to screen for cyclorphine.

Despite challenges in detecting this new drug, Aalhus said Blood Ties still encourages those planning to use drugs to access harm reduction services such as the supervised consumption site, drug checking services and safer consumption supplies available at Blood Ties. Aalhus also encouraged all members of the public to carry a naloxone kit and know how to use it to respond to an overdose.

“We really encourage people to be utilizing those harm reduction services and tips,” Aalhus said, highlighting the effectiveness of Blood Ties’ harm reduction measures.

“We have responded to I believe it’s now more than 700 overdoses at the supervised consumption site and we’ve had no deaths on site.”

Virtual services such as the National Overdose Response Service phone line are also available to provide support and safety while using drugs. The toll-free phone line is available 24/7 across Canada at 1-888-688-6677.

Contact reporter Noah Korver at noah.korver@yukon-news.com