Someone in Tasmania Died After Using Drugs That May Have Held an Opioid They Didn't Know About

The person who died in Tasmania this week has not been named, and the state’s health department says they “may not have known” that what they took was contaminated. Officials reported the death on October 6 and said it was the first known detection in Tasmania of a novel synthetic opioid from what they call the “U-class.”

The only safe assumption about any unregulated pill or powder is that it can contain an opioid, and the only safe kit is one with naloxone in it.

That is not a scare line. It is the plain reading of what officials said. Dinesh Arya, the Department of Health’s Acting Secretary, said there is “limited information available about these substances and how they affect individuals”. Amanda Roxburgh, a senior research fellow at the Burnet Institute, said substances in this class have turned up in a small number of deaths since 2016, that their potency is unpredictable, and that people can die within minutes. Roxburgh said they are most likely ordered online, and that their strength makes them easy to move in tiny amounts. The part that matters most for anyone who doesn’t think of themselves as an opioid user: such opioids have been found contaminating methamphetamine and ecstasy, so a person can take what they believe is a stimulant and get an opioid.

Two cautions. This is one death reported through one news organization relaying the department’s statement, and the department itself says it knows little about the compound. Earlier surveillance summaries from the Burnet Institute had described new synthetic opioids turning up in every Australian state and territory except Tasmania, so the first detection fits a pattern that was already moving. The date of that earlier summary is not given in the version we could read, so treat the “except Tasmania” detail as background rather than a current status.

Here is what the department asked people to do, and it applies in any country. Learn the signs: slow, irregular or stopped breathing, difficulty waking someone, unresponsiveness, pinpoint pupils, and blue or grey lips or fingertips. Call emergency services right away. Arya said naloxone “can temporarily reverse an opioid overdose and save a life”. The word “temporarily” matters, and it is why you call for help even after it works. In the United States, naloxone nasal spray has been sold over the counter since 2023, without a prescription.

For anyone running a stimulant program, a nightlife outreach table, a college health center or a clinic that sees people who “don’t use opioids,” the move this week is cheap: put naloxone in the bag, in the lobby, in the hands of the people who say it isn’t for them. Ask every patient who uses anything whether they carry it and whether the person they use with knows where it is.

No one in Tasmania was handed a choice about what was in the drugs. Naloxone is the one choice left for the people around them.