Police say they have seized nearly $4 million worth of fentanyl pills in Edmonton as part of a massive bust they believe to be Canada’s largest of the powerful opioid.
An investigation into a group believed to be trafficking a large amount of drugs began in March.
Officers seized $2 million in fentanyl pills at an Edmonton home more than three weeks ago and then searched three more homes in the city, plus another in nearby Sturgeon County. It was there that police and RCMP officers found a house that had been made into a fentanyl pill-processing lab.
“We know that this drug bust is very significant and we believe that we have saved a number of lives by taking all this fentanyl off the streets,” Staff Sgt. Karen Ockerman with the Edmonton Police Service’s drug and gang unit said Friday.
Ockerman said police aren’t naive enough to think there aren’t any other labs out there.
“But we think this had made a difference.”
The investigation led to a total of 130,000 fentanyl pills being seized with an estimated street value of $3.9 million.