OTTAWA — A dozen Ottawa residents are facing a total of more than 130 charges after a drug investigation related to the trafficking of counterfeit pills containing the deadly opioid fentanyl.
Ottawa police say the seven men and five women — who range in age from 27 to 63 — were arrested Thursday in an investigation that began last September and involved Ontario Provincial Police as the pills were also being dispersed to rural areas of eastern Ontario.
Ten of the accused were arrested when officers executed search warrants Thursday morning at a single family residence, two townhomes, two apartments and a storage locker in Ottawa and the other two were arrested later in the day.
Police say officers seized counterfeit pills containing fentanyl, fentanyl powder, cocaine, and methamphetamine. Police also seized assault rifles, handguns, stun guns, a shotgun, ammunition, more than $130,000 in cash.
The arrests came after police and public health officials in Ottawa warned residents about counterfeit prescription medication that they suspected was linked to recent life-threatening overdoses in the city.
Fentanyl — a drug prescribed for chronic pain management — is roughly 100 times more potent than morphine and about 40 times stronger than heroin. It produces a drug high but also depresses the body's rate of respiration, which can cause breathing to stop — a dose of just two milligrams of pure fentanyl can be lethal.
Police said counterfeit pills can be manufactured to look almost identical to prescription opioids like Percocet and warned that illicit fentanyl has been detected in certain fake pills.
Police have said many people are ingesting it unknowingly as the drug, which cannot be seen, smelled or tasted, is difficult to detect when laced into other drugs.
