State’s urgent warning after four die

Police have issued a major warning about the circulation of potentially lethal illicit drugs in Canberra after four deaths from overdoses over the past two months.

ACT Police suspect high purity drug levels, or the addition of synthetic opioids like fentanyl or nitazenes, are responsible for the deaths in the capital.

The most recent deaths include a man and woman who died in separate incidents on Thursday – in addition to two others over the past two months.

Police are yet to determine the exact causes of the overdoses.

ACT Policing Detective Acting Superintendent Dave Craft said synthetic opioids have been identified in the ACT as recently as May this year.

“While police are focused on disrupting drug suppliers who deliberately cause harm and misery to our community, we want to raise awareness on this issue and encourage illicit drug users to engage in harm minimisation practices and protect themselves from these harmful substances currently in circulation,” he said.

“There is no safe drug use, however we understand drug addiction is a health issue.

“In light of recent overdoses that police have attended we are urging those who are using drugs to do this as safely as possible.”

Acting Superintendent Craft said officers had responded to incidents where people had died overnight, losing consciousness in the middle of the night and not being discovered until the next morning.

He said he didn’t want to see more preventable deaths in the community.

In a statement, ACT Police said drugs can be tested at CanTEST – a free and confidential chemical analysis of pills and drugs intended for personal use.

Earlier this year, a 60 Minutes program exposed the danger behind nitazenes and how they were ending up in the hands of vulnerable Aussies.

Nitazenes are a highly potent synthetic opioid developed in the 1950s – but their strength meant they never made it onto pharmacy shelves.

On the program, experts revealed any type of substance from MDMA to cocaine, counterfeit painkillers and even vapes, could be laced with the lethal substance. Twenty nitazene-linked deaths have already reported in Australia, on top of dozens of overdoses.

Health authorities have issued multiple alerts for the dangerous substance, with one from NSW Health in November linking a death to nitazenes found in black market vape juice, which are used to refill vape pens.

In May, NSW Health issued a warning after four people in Sydney overdosed and were hospitalised from nitazenes.

One month earlier, 20 people overdosed in the Nepean Blue Mountains area, where nitazenes were found in people who thought they were using heroin.