Victoria’s Health Department issues warning over synthetic opioid in white powder

Health authorities have issued an urgent warning after a deadly opioid was found being sold in one state’s illicit drug market.

Victoria’s health authorities have issued an urgent warning after cocaine sold in Melbourne was found to contain a potentially deadly synthetic opioid.

On Tuesday, the Health Department warned there had been “serious harms” in the capital city associated with protonitazene – an extremely potent depressant more than 100 times more potent than heroin.

It warned the opioid had been found being sold as cocaine in a white powder.

“Cocaine and protonitazene are very different substances,” the department said.

“Cocaine produces stimulant effects, whereas protonitazene produces sedative effects and may lead to opioid overdose.

“The product appears to produce strong adverse effects such as loss of consciousness, respiratory depression and life-threatening hypoxia.”

The drug has been sold as cocaine. Picture: Supplied

Protonitazene has previously been linked to overdoses across the country.

The health alert comes a week after Victorian Premier Jacinta Allan announced the state would trial pill testing at festivals and events starting in the summer months.

She suggested the policy had been inspired by a surge of overdoses at music festivals across the state, saying paramedics had responded to more ODs in the first three months of 2024.

“Let’s be clear, no drug is ever truly safe,” she said.

“But people deserve to know if that one pill will kill, and if someone is asking for that information and we have the power to give it to them, then why on earth wouldn’t we?”

Victoria has been rocked in recent months by an increasing number of overdoses. Picture: NewsWire / Luis Enrique Ascui

In May, the Australian Federal Police warned a similar class of synthetic opioid, nitazene, was increasingly being detected at the border.

“We are warning the community that there is no such thing as a safe dosage when it comes to this drug … the risk you are taking is your own life,” Australian Federal Police Commander Paula Hudson said.