‘Really scary time’: Carfentanil-related deaths on the rise in Alberta

More than 300 people died due to drug poisoning in the first five months of 2025 in Edmonton. CTV News Edmonton's Nicole Weisberg reports.

Recovery Alberta is issuing a warning about the deadly rise of carfentanil in illicit street drugs, which is leading to weekly jumps in opioid-related emergencies in the Edmonton area.

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According to data from the Alberta Substance Use Surveillance System (ASUSS), Edmonton made up 73 per cent of the total weekly calls to Emergency Health Services (EHS) for opioid-related events in the last week of August. The numbers translate to about 234 calls in the Edmonton region.

ASUSS data also shows that in the first five months of 2025, 68 per cent of opioid deaths in Alberta involved carfentanil which is up from 10 per cent in the same period in 2024. In Edmonton, that number has climbed from 17 per cent to 78 per cent, with 88 per cent of all carfentanil-related deaths in Alberta taking place in the capital region

‘It’s a really scary time’

Rob Tanguay is a senior medical lead for addiction services with Recovery Alberta. In an interview with CTV News Edmonton, he said “it’s a really scary time” and that people need to be on guard.

“Anything that you think may be safe – if it’s a powder or a pill or a crystal or anything else that you’re going to use – is at a very high risk of having carfentanil in it,” Tanguay warned. “You’re at a very high risk of dying no matter who you are or where you live.”

He said carfentanil deaths are being seen in “all individuals” from occasional drug users to those who may feel quite protected and have a high tolerance to opioids.

According to the Canadian Centre of Recovery Excellence, carfentanil is estimated to be up to 10,000 times stronger than morphine and 100 times stronger than fentanyl. Tanguay said this potency is part of the draw for drug users wanting a “better high” but also factors like profit margins can be enticing to dealers, who can sell smaller amounts to more people wanting that fix.

“It’s really a mixture of a lot of people who are really unwell, a lot of people who are highly tolerant to the substance that they’re using, and a lot of profit narratives from people who don’t care if people are alive or not,” he explained, saying there is a likelihood of one carfentanil lab being responsible for the dangerous trend in Edmonton.

‘It poses a risk to all Albertans’

Richelle Booker is a forensic pharmacologist with Alberta Law Enforcement Response Teams (ALERT). She works with police and health care providers to help mitigate the harm from unregulated drugs in the province.

“The unregulated drug supply as a whole is problematic in the sense that it contains so many unpredictable substances and at unpredictable concentrations,” Booker told CTV News Edmonton in an interview on Tuesday.

She explained, in agreement with Tanguay, that most fentanyl samples are “highly complex mixtures” and that there is no way to know whether a drug contains carfentanil or not.

“It poses a risk to all Albertans, really,” Booker cautioned.

“If it’s a person who’s using substances for the first time, maybe at a party – they’re pressured to try something or or they’re curious to try something – there’s no way of knowing whether or not that particular drug mixture has carfentanil in it.”

She said her main advice is “don’t use alone,” as it is important to monitor toxicity levels and to have help reversing toxicity with things like naloxone.

Seeking treatment

Tanguay said not all the numbers show an increase in overdose deaths in Alberta.

“Calgary is lower in overdose death rates today than we were even before 2016, but Edmonton is higher than it’s ever been,” he said. “That really talks about the risks of what’s out there and to be really, really careful right now.”

There are many resources available to those wanting or needing help, according to Tanguay.

Resources include virtual options like:

• call the Virtual Opioid Dependency Program at 1-844-383-7688, which is open seven days a week from 6 a.m. to midnight, or visit vodp.ca;
• download the Digital Overdose Response System (DORS) app, which is a free and confidential tool connecting users to emergency help if they become unresponsive;
• call the addiction helpline at 1-866-332-2322 for support 24/7;
• call 211 Alberta for information on community and social services; and
• call Health Link at 811 to connect to health advice and to find a doctor.

More information about addiction and recovery services can be found online at recoveryalberta.ca.

With files from CTV News Edmonton’s Nicole Weisberg and Cam Wiebe