Two men died in their car outside a BP petrol garage in Abingdon after smoking cocaine laced with a synthetic drug that researchers have said is 500 times stronger than morphine.

Forklift truck driver Peter Haslam, 49, and Adrian Davies, 43, a construction worker, were found together in a vehicle parked behind 45 Vineyard, Abingdon, on September 14 last year.

Both men were unresponsive when they were found. Naloxone, a medication used to reverse opioid overdose, was administered and attempts made to resuscitate the pair – although both proved unsuccessful.

An inquest last week heard that the men died after smoking cocaine that had been laced with isotonitazene.

The man-made opioid was last year described as a 'secret killer' in a letter to the British Medical Journal from researchers at Imperial College London’s toxicology unit.

The drug, which last summer was being mixed with heroin, was ‘a risk to public health and a real danger to those who misuse drugs, especially both heroin and cocaine users’, the academics said.

It was said to be 500 times 'more potent' than morphine and stronger than fentanyl, a substance sometimes used to contaminate heroin and linked to a number of overdose deaths.

At the time of Mr Haslam and Mr Davies’ deaths last September, addiction charity Turning Point suggested that another suspected overdose was linked to contaminated drugs.

READ MORE: THIRD death connected to suspected batch of contaminated drugs

The organisation’s Andy Symons said: “It is very unusual, in my seven years in Oxfordshire we have never known this number of deaths in a single day.

"Generally, we have a very low number of drug-related deaths, so to have two potentially three in one day is extremely high.”

At the time it was thought that the deaths were the result of contaminated heroin. Mr Symons added: “Some people are not sure how much they are using in terms of the purity of the heroin and that is potentially why the deaths are suspected to be drug-related.”

 

The Vineyard, Abingdon Picture: GOOGLE

The Vineyard, Abingdon Picture: GOOGLE

 

Following the deaths in Abingdon, Turning Point was said to have worked in homeless supported housing and with the police to raise concerns about the potentially contaminated drugs.

Posters printed last year warning drug users of the contaminated batch remain in place in Oxford Magistrates' Court.

Following their inquests last week, assistant coroner Sonia Hayes gave the cause of death for both Mr Haslam, of Larkhill Road, Abingdon, and Mr Davies, of Thornhill Walk, Abingdon, as multi-drug toxicity. Cocaine, amphetamine and isotonitazene was found in their blood.

She recorded a conclusion of drug-related death for both men.

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