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Toiling quietly in a University of Alberta lab, a group of Edmonton scientists developed a synthetic opioid in the early 1980s with jaw-dropping properties.

Tests indicated W-18 was 100 times as potent as Fentanyl, a prescription painkiller blamed for hundreds of overdose deaths across Canada in recent years.

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Never actually studied on humans or picked up by a pharmaceutical company, the Alberta invention languished in obscurity for 30 years — a forgotten chemical formula.

Suddenly, though, W-18 is back and causing a stir, as a fearful Health Canada moves to make the drug a federally controlled substance — illegal to sell, possess, manufacture or import.

Now we have another drug that we know is here, that is 100 times more toxic than Fentanyl

The experimental medication — readily available online from vendors overseas and in Canada — has surfaced here, in Europe and the United States as a recreational drug, a new street narcotic of unprecedented lethality.

“Now we have another drug that we know is here, that is 100 times more toxic than Fentanyl,” said Staff Sgt. Martin Schiavetta of the Calgary police drug unit, which made Canada’s first seizure of W-18. “Of course, we’re very concerned.”