Thomas Vale, Carly Morse identified as victims of nitazene overdose after consuming cocaine

Police are scrambling to remove a drug 100 times more powerful than heroin off our streets after a Melbourne couple died taking what they thought was cocaine.

Cocaine users are playing Russian roulette when they snort a line as two more of the victims of a mystery nitazene overdose can be revealed.

Plasterer Thomas Vale, 32, and his girlfriend Carly Morse, 42, were killed when they took cocaine laced with nitazenes, a synthetic drug 100 times more powerful than heroin.

They were with Adbul El Sayed, 17, and Michael Hodkinson, 37, in the Bicknell Court home in Broadmeadows, Melbourne, last month.

Enough nitazene to kill two million Australians has already been seized this year, as police scramble to stem the flow from 120 labs in China.

Sources close to Hells Angels and Comanchero bikies say the gangs have no interest in the drug because they do not want to kill their customers.

They argued that small time players were behind the imports, but only a small amount of the drug can be fatal, making it almost impossible to police.

Tom Vale.

Carly Morse.

Mr Vale’s sister Cassie said the family was still in shock at her brother’s passing.

“I feel like he’s going to call me next week and say it’s all a joke,” Ms Vale, 30, said.

“They were not planning to overdose, they had just been to Maccas. They had frappés, they hadn’t even finished them.”

Ms Vale said that her brother was survived by his seven year old daughter.

He had been dating Ms Morse for three years.

“I don’t think either of them could have coped without the other. Carly was such a good person, they shared a special bond,” she said.

The family were now clinging on to memories of Tom from Cassie’s 30th birthday where he was the “life of the party”.

“He was so loved,” she said.

“For Tom it was about the simple things — sharing a meal, sharing a laugh.”

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Tom’s neighbour Cory Lewis found the bodies of the four friends shortly after 2am on June 25.

He jumped the fence after trying to get them to answer the door several times.

A window near the door of the new one-bedroom unit, which Mr Lewis broke to access the kitchen where they were laying, has been boarded up.

Victoria Police have been handed the mobile phones of all four victims of the overdose.

It was expected they would investigate who they had been contacting in the days leading up to their deaths to discover where the tainted drugs came from.

The deaths were not being treated as murder, police said.

“Hume Crime Investigation Unit are investigating the circumstances surrounding the death of the four people in Broadmeadows last month,” a Victoria Police statement said.

“They will also prepare the report for the Coroner.

“The deaths of all four people are being treated as non-suspicious at this time.

“As this matter is now before the coroner it would be inappropriate to provide further details at this time.”

Tom Vale, right, with, from left, father Craig, half sister Ali, and sister Cassie.

A baby photograph of Tom Vale.

Ms Vale, a social worker, said all cocaine users were now at risk.

“I’m not shocked by drug use, I see it at work. We need to do more harm minimisation and get more health services,” she said.

“But who puts this stuff in cocaine? People do cocaine all the time, they don’t expect to die.”

A Chinese national, Wei Chet Wong, was arrested in Melbourne in June with 4kg of nitazenes, raising fears about a wave of the drug hitting Australia’s streets.

He faced court two days after the overdose deaths in Melbourne but there was no suggestion Wong supplied the drugs to the Broadmeadows victims.

Underworld sources with links to the influential bikie gangs and cocaine importers said there was “no way anyone that does weight” would bring nitazenes into Australia.

They said that only smaller players would be reckless enough to bring in the deadly drug.

There have been at least 20 deaths linked to nitazenes, with drug experts warning it had the potential to be a tsunami.

Police and ambulance officers on the scene of the fatal overdose. Picture: Andrew Henshaw

Emergency services wore hazard suits. Picture: Andrew Henshaw

“If there’s a scale and you have codeine one end, heroin is more powerful than codeine and fentanyl is 50 times more powerful than heroin — nitazenes are so powerful we need a new scale to look at the strength of these opioids,” Scott Drummond, head of policy and practice at the Victorian Alcohol and Drug Association, said.

He added that organised crime was unlikely to stoke the market in Australia because “it’s mutually assured destruction for the bikies if these nitazenes become entrenched in the community”.

Michael Hodgkinson. Picture: Supplied.

Abdul El Sayed, 17, right.

Commander Transnational Operations Paula Hudson said there had been an increase of seizures of nitazenes over the past 18 months.

Nearly all of the nitazenes seized were found in mail parcels, often sent from China or the UK.

“There is no safe dose of nitazenes. They were never authorised for any usage because of the volatility of the substance and the inability for the medical fraternity to determine what the safe dose was,” Commander Hudson said.

“Organised crime people using nitazenes to cut other substances wouldn’t know what is a safe dose.”

The US had more than 100,000 deaths in 2023, linked to the use of fentanyl.

“Our greatest concern is the cohort who are taking what they believe is another substance that has been cut with nitazenes,” Commander Hudson said.

“We have seen that with the cocaine alert in Victoria. We’ve had health alerts put out in Sydney following overdose from tablets sold as MDMA red bulls containing nitazenes. We’ve had people thinking they are taking ketamine and it’s nitazene.”

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Originally published as Thomas Vale, Carly Morse identified as victims of nitazene overdose after consuming cocaine