Saskatoon police link another overdose death to fake OxyContin
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Saskatoon police are issuing another warning about a dangerous drug being passed off as Oxycontin.
The alert comes following the death of a 19-year-old man on Jan. 3. Toxicology testing showed he had a lethal dose of fentanyl in his system. Fentanyl is a synthetic opioid several times more toxic than oxycodone, the principle ingredient in OxyContin, which is marketed as a painkiller.
Police issued a similar warning after a pair of deaths in September 2014 were linked to pills containing fentanyl pressed to look like OxyContin 80 tablets. Those tablets haven’t actually been available in Canada for some time, as the company that made them changed the formulation to make pills that are harder to abuse.
Police are warning people not to take any drug not perscribed by a doctor and dispensed by a pharmacist. They noted that real OxyContin 80s are white pills with a green coating. The fentanyl-laced counterfeits are blue-green throughout.
