Edmonton Police Service Staff Sgt. Kevin Berge with Edmonton Drug and Gang Enforcemant (EDGE) outlines the material seized in a drug bust involving a secret compartment at police headquarters in Edmonton on Wednesday, January 25, 2017. Ian Kucerak / Postmedia
Police fear a growing amount of buffing agent being seized in drug busts means more high-level dealers bringing wholesale quantities into Edmonton for redistribution, creating another avenue for profit.

The Edmonton Drug and Gang Enforcement (EDGE) unit seized more buffing agent in 2016 -- 82.05 kg -- than all cocaine, marijuana, heroin and methamphetamine combined. A single EDGE investigation in January yielded more than 150 kg of phenacetin known on the street as “superbuff," enough to fill four large barrels and potentially worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.

“Cocaine traffickers need the buffing agent to make money, and selling illegal drugs is about making money. It’s just one part of the puzzle,” said EDGE Staff Sgt. Kevin Berge.

Buffing agents are used by drug dealers to dilute illicit drugs to increase profits.

“I could take my one kilo of cocaine and make two from it, thus increasing my end profit,” said Berge.

Berge said phenacetin– a painkiller pulled from the pharmaceutical market in Canada in 1978 after it was found to be carcinogenic – is the most popular buffing agent used by dealers to cut cocaine.

Arno Siraki, an associate professor in the faculty of pharmacy and pharmaceutical sciences at the University of Alberta, said phenacetin has been labelled by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) as a Group 1 carcinogen —the highest classification of cancer-causing substances —putting it on the same list as radioactive materials like plutonium.

“Any time a substance is labelled as a Group 1 carcinogen there is no dose that is safe," warns Siraki.

Siraki said large doses of phenacetin can cause hemolytic anemia, a condition that destroys red blood cells, and methemoglobinemia, a condition that inhibits the ability of red blood cells to carry oxygen that in severe cases can cause seizures, coma or death.

Repeated use of phenacetin can cause kidney damage and failure, and overtime phenacetin consumption can cause cancer of the renal pelvis and ureter, the "excretion routes of the drug," said Siraki.

Barrels of buff

Because of its popularity among drug dealers, superbuff phenacetin has become just as saleable for high-level dealers on its own as it is when mixed with cocaine, said Berge, with drug dealers selling phenacetin to other lower level dealers.

Berge said the barrels of phenacetin seized in January appear to have been shipped from China where it is readily available, and the white powdery substance is sometimes shipped under different names to avoid detection.

Finding buffing agents is a good indicator for investigators that a suspect has higher level knowledge of cooking or converting illegal drugs — such as converting cocaine into crack cocaine — said Berge, giving police the option to charge someone in possession of the substance with production on top of any other related drug possession or trafficking charges.

Berge stresses to users that there is no quality control or health standards involved in buying or selling illegal drugs.

“Each time you take an illegal drug it’s like playing Russian roulette, you don’t know what you are going to take. It’s not made in a facility that has quality control. You don’t know what the ingredients are, you don’t know what it’s being laced with,” said Berge.

This table, published in the 2016 Annual Policing Plan Q4 report presented to the Edmonton Police Commission on Feb. 16, 2017, summarizes EDGE arrests, drug, property, and weapons seizures in 2016.